Khartoum (AFP) - Britain expressed hope on Sunday for a "proper" probe into an assault by armed men who left a Sudanese newspaper editor in hospital.
Gunmen raided the Al-Tayar daily on Saturday evening and severely beat chief editor Osman Mirghani, who had called for normalisation of ties with Israel.
"I hope there will be a proper investigation to discover what has happened," British ambassador Peter Tibber told reporters outside Al-Zaytouna Hospital in central Khartoum, where Mirghani was conscious and being treated.
The editor's family was with him and he was "strong", said Tibber, expressing hope that "he will be out soon and that he can recover over Eid", the festival of Eid al-Fitr which starts next week at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The violence against Mirghani was an unusual physical attack against a journalist in Sudan, although reporters regularly complain of censorship by the National Intelligence and Security Service.
About seven gunmen drove up to the newspaper's office on Saturday evening and ordered the staff to lie down, Faisal Mohamed Salih, an award-winning Sudanese journalist and press freedom advocate, told AFP, citing information from Al-Tayar reporters.
They took the reporters' mobile phones and laptops, and severed computer connections before turning on Mirghani in his office, said Salih, who won the 2013 Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism.
They "started beating him in his head, in his leg, using the guns and the sticks," he said.
About 300 Sudanese journalists gathered outside Al-Tayar's office on Sunday to protest the incident, witnesses said.
It occurred just a few days after Mirghani called on local television for Islamist Sudan to normalise relations with Israel, Salih said.
Mirghani's comments came during an Israeli military assault on the Gaza strip, where the death toll on Sunday passed 410 after 13 days.
Israeli officials have long accused Sudan of serving as a base of support for Islamist Hamas militants.
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