A US diplomat and his driver were shot dead in a possible terror attack in Sudan yesterday while returning home from a new year party at the British Embassy in Khartoum.

John Michael Granville, 33, who worked for the US Agency for International Development, reportedly left the party and dropped off another person before being shot five times at close range at about 4am as he returned to his home near the UN compound in Khartoum.

Mr Granville underwent surgery but died several hours later. Abdel Rahman Abbas, 40, his Sudanese driver, died immediately.

The shooting resembled the murder of Laurence Foley, a US aid official shot outside his home in Amman, the Jordanian capital, in 2002. A military court in Jordan imposed the death penalty on eight Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda - six of them in absentia.

Walter Braunohler, the spokesman at the US Embassy in Khartoum, said it was too early to tell whether the attack was terror-related. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said the shooting was “isolated and has no political or ideological connotations”, and pledged to bring the culprits to justice.

However, the shootings came a day after the UN took over command of the African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. On Monday President Bush signed a law making it easier for US investment managers to divest from Sudan. Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, has called for militants to attack UN peacekeepers in Sudan.

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