US wants 'credible' probe into Sudan military crackdown

The United States' top diplomat to Africa says there needs to be an "independent and credible" investigation into the Sudanese military's violent dispersal of a protest camp in Khartoum last week.

Tibor Nagy said the deadly crackdown "constituted a 180 degree turn in the way events were going with murder, rape, pillaging, by members of the Security Forces."

Nagy, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, said Sudan risks sliding into Libya or Somalia-like chaos. Speaking in Ethiopia late Friday after a two-day visit to Sudan, he said both the military council and protest leaders "absolutely distrust each other."

Protest organisers say the crackdown led by the Rapid Support Forces, a feared paramilitary unit, killed over 100 people in the capital and across Sudan. Authorities, however, have offered a lower death toll of 61, including three security forces.

The Sudanese Doctors Union last week accused security forces of carrying out attacks on hospitals and raping women near the army headquarters in Khartoum.

The RSF have their origins in the Janjaweed militia, which was sent to fight insurgents in Darfur, and in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.

The militia in accused of war crimes in the Darfur conflict between 2003 and 2004 in a campaign against ethnic groups suspected of supporting rebels.

Rights groups have accused the militia of abuse against civilians in Darfur, such as rape, extrajudicial killings, looting, torture, poisoning wells and burning villages.