US diplomat, 33, and driver killed in Sudan

UN had warned staff of terrorists planning attacks

The diplomat, John Granville, was from Buffalo.

NAIROBI - An American diplomat in Sudan and his driver were shot and killed early yesterday as they were coming home from a New Year's Eve party in Khartoum, the capital.

In Washington, the US Agency for International Development identified the diplomat as one of its officials, John Granville, 33, originally of Buffalo.

American officials said it was too early to tell whether the shooting had been random or planned, but Sudanese officials said the circumstances were suspicious, especially because gun crime is rare in Khartoum, considered one of the safest cities in Africa.

The United Nations had recently warned its staff in Sudan that there was credible evidence that a terrorist cell was planning to attack foreigners.

According to Western officials, Granville left a New Year's Eve party at the British Embassy about 2:30 a.m. and was being driven to his home in an upscale neighborhood in central Khartoum. Shortly before he arrived, a car pulled up next to him and 17 shots were fired, Sudanese officials said.

Granville's driver, a Sudanese employee of the American Embassy, was killed instantly, and Granville was shot in the neck and chest. He was rushed to the hospital and died several hours later. The Sudanese Interior Ministry identified the Sudanese driver as Abdel Rahman Abbas, 40.

A Sudanese government official said that the attack appeared well planned. The assailants' car sped in front of the diplomat's car, cutting it off. Two gunmen exited their car, with one of them shooting Granville and the other shooting the driver, the official said.

Walter Braunohler, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Khartoum, said he could not comment on the circumstances because the shooting was under investigation.

A spokesman for Sudan's Foreign Ministry said US and Sudanese law enforcement agents were working closely to investigate.

The attack came just hours after President Bush signed a bill that makes it easier for mutual funds and other investment managers to sell stakes in companies that do business in Sudan. The bill is aimed at Sudan's oil and defense industries, and is part of the broader campaign to press the Sudanese government to end the bloodshed in Darfur.

The United States has urged the Sudanese government to cooperate better with the peacekeeping mission in Darfur, and on Monday, formal authority was transferred from the African Union force to a joint UN-African Union mission.

Granville had served USAID in Sudan as well as Nairobi. He had been deeply involved in a project to distribute 450,000 radios equipped with generator cranks and solar panels, which work in places with no electricity.

The goal was to prepare southern Sudan for elections in 2009 and a possible referendum in 2011 on independence, according to Shari K. Bryan, who is a senior associate and regional director for East and Southern Africa at the National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit, prodemocracy group based in Washington.

Sean McCabe, who is married to John Granville's only sibling, Katie McCabe, said Granville had been in Africa for about 10 years, since his graduation from Clark University in Worcester. The Peace Corps sent Granville to Cameroon for two years in the mid-1990s, and Granville also won a Fulbright scholarship for study in Africa. .

"That was his life," McCabe said. "He loved it."