TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

U.S. Diplomat Killed By Gunmen In Sudan

ADVERTISEMENT

By MOHAMED OSMAN, The Associated Press

Published: January 2, 2008

KHARTOUM, Sudan - An American diplomat was fatally shot early Tuesday by gunmen in a car that sped past his vehicle, cutting it off, as he was being driven home in Sudan's capital, officials said.

He died after surgery.

The diplomat's family identified him as John Granville, 33, originally of Buffalo, N.Y.

He was an official for the U.S. Agency for International Development working to implement a 2005 peace agreement between Sudan's north and south that ended more than two decades of civil war, the family said.

Granville's Sudanese driver was killed in the shooting.
Sudanese officials insisted it was not a terrorist attack, but the U.S. Embassy said it was too soon to determine the motive.

The Sudanese government often drums up anti-Western sentiment in the media. But attacks on foreigners are rare in Khartoum, where an American diplomat was last killed in 1973.

Granville was being driven home about 4 a.m. when another vehicle cut off his car and gunmen opened fire, the Sudanese Interior Ministry said.

The diplomat's driver, Abdel-Rahman Abbas, 40, was killed. Granville initially survived the attack with five gunshot wounds to the hand, shoulder and stomach.

He died after surgery, said Walter Braunohler, public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum.

The USAID Web site, in a posting before his death, said Granville was working in southern Sudan on a program to distribute radios and previously had worked on other aid projects in the south.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry said the incident was "isolated and has no political or ideological connotations" and also pledged to bring the culprits to justice, according to state news agency SUNA.

The shooting came a day after a joint U.N.-African peacekeeping force took over control in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died in a conflict that began in 2003.

Al-Qaida has called for a jihad, or holy war, in Sudan against the peacekeepers.

But al-Qaida has shown little overt presence in the country in the years since the Sudanese government threw out Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s.

Humanitarian aid workers have come under increasing attack in Darfur, but such attacks have not been known to occur in Khartoum.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT