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Khartoum: US security agents are investigating reports that a previously unknown militant group was behind the killing of a US aid officer and his Sudanese driver in Khartoum, an embassy official said on day.
John Granville, a 33-year-old officer with the US Agency for International Development, was shot and killed while returning from New Year's celebrations in Sudan's capital early on Tuesday. He was the first US government official killed in Khartoum in more than three decades.
Granville's driver Abdul Rahman Abbas Rahama, 39, was also killed in the attack, rare in a capital considered one of the safest in Africa.
On Friday, an Islamist website posted a message from a group calling itself Ansar Al Tawhid in Sudan (Companions of Monotheism), claiming responsibility for the killings.
Walter Braunohler, a spokesman for the US embassy in Sudan, said FBI agents working with Sudanese authorities were aware of the claim.
"Everything is being looked into. What we are really interested in are facts," he told Reuters.
Washington's relations with Khartoum have been tense, in large part due to the ongoing ethnic and political conflict in Darfur in Sudan's west, which US President George W. Bush has labelled genocide. The Sudanese government rejects that charge.
Tuesday's attack prompted the US embassy to urge its citizens in Sudan to "exercise heightened security awareness".
The US government had said in August it had information "an extremist group' might target US government interests in Sudan. Around that time, Sudanese security services said they had uncovered a plot to bomb Western embassies in the capital.
'Isolated incident'
Sudanese officials have said the attack was an isolated incident.
A spokesman from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said officials would be meeting yesterday to discuss Ansar Al Tawhid's claim of responsibility. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the claim, which was posted on a website commonly used by Islamist groups, including Al Qaida leaders.
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