Filed at 12:10 p.m. ET
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) -- Rioters burned cars and threw stones in Sudan's capital Monday after a helicopter crash killed the country's vice president, who until recently was a southern rebel leader.
Sudanese leaders appealed for calm and said the nation's peace process would remain on track. But some southern Sudanese were suspicious about the circumstances of the death of John Garang, who was a key figure in the fledgling peace deal between the predominantly Arab Muslim government and the Christian south.
Anti-riot police were deployed to several areas of Sudan's capital, Khartoum, where crowds pelted passers-by with stones and smashed car windows. At least 10 private and government-owned cars were set on fire.
Khartoum's governor ordered a 6 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew and the city's streets were empty of people and traffic an hour before the order took effect.
Witnesses reported at least two people had been killed during clashes in the capital. There was no official confirmation.
The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum said there were reports of violence in southern Sudan and issued a reminder of its warnings to Americans to avoid nonessential travel to the country. There were no details on the southern violence.
The violence and widespread grief surrounding Garang's death forced most in the capital to lock themselves inside their homes. Shop owners shuttered their stores.
''Murderers! Murderers!'' yelled some southern Sudanese protesters who alleged the Sudanese government, which had battled Garang's rebel force for two decades before this year's peace deals, might have been behind the crash.
''We lost Garang at a time when we needed him the most, but we think that we have made great strides toward peace and we believe that that peace process should continue,'' said Garang aide Nihal Deng during an emergency Cabinet meeting.
Garang's longtime deputy, Silva Kiir, was quickly named to succeed him as head of his Sudan People's Liberation Army and as president of south Sudan, Garang spokesman Yasser Arman told The Associated Press.
Kiir said he called a meeting of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement top decision-making body to assemble for an emergency meeting. The SPLM became part of the national unity government in July, when Garang became vice president.
''I call upon all members of the SPLM and the entire Sudanese nation to remain calm and vigilant,'' Kiir said.
A sorrowful looking U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lamented Garang's death but said he was hopeful the peace process would hold together.
Annan said he was in Khartoum last month when Garang was sworn in as first vice president and remembered the promise surrounding the event.
''At that time it was such a moment of hope,'' Annan said. ''Here is a man who had lived and fought for peace and one united Sudan and just as he was on the verge of achieving what he has lived and fought for he is taken away from us.''
Garang died when the helicopter he was flying in crashed into a mountain in southern Sudan in bad weather, killing him and the other 13 people on board, Sudan's government said Monday.
Senior SPLM official Deng Alor, speaking from the southern Sudanese town of New Site where Garang's remains were taken, appealed for calm and promised an investigation into the deaths.
Alor said weather was bad in the area where the crash occurred and stressed that the SPLM was not blaming the Sudanese government of Omar el-Bashir.
''People have got to restrain themselves. People should not begin to point fingers at anybody,'' Alor told AP by telephone.
In the capital of neighboring Kenya, groups of southern Sudanese men huddled to discuss Garang's death. Nairobi has been the base for Garang's southern Sudan liberation movement and is home to thousands of southern Sudanese.
One Sudanese man in Nairobi, Atem Maper, 30, said younger southern Sudanese were suspicious of the circumstances of Garang's death.
''People are worried that the war will continue,'' Maper said. ''They didn't understand the way he died. We are going to see.''
But the chief mediator during Sudan's peace negotiations, retired Kenyan Gen. Lazaro Sumbeiywo, said he was sure there was no foul play because Garang was flying over an SPLM area.
''I totally disregard that (foul play theory) completely because the area he was flying into was an area he controlled,'' Sumbeiywo said.
But the charismatic leader's death struck a blow to the January peace deal that ended a 21-year civil war in which some 2 million people died.
The crash of Garang's flight brought up the specter of the 1994 downing of the airplane of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, who had been trying to implement a power-sharing deal between his fellow Hutus and the rival Tutsis. His death opened the doors to the Rwandan genocide in which more than 500,000 people were killed.
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Associated Press writers Henry Wasswa in Kampala, Uganda, and Maggie Michael in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.