US Secret Service probes fresh sex allegations

The US Secret Service has confirmed an investigation into allegations that agents hired strippers and prostitutes in El Salvador, before a visit last year by US president Barack Obama.

A new report says Secret Service members had sex with strippers at a club in the Salvadoran capital, San Salvador, and took prostitutes into their hotel rooms last spring, senior politicians said on Thursday.

Mark Sullivan, senior director of the Secret Service, is looking into the report but has so far not found anything "credible" to back it up, Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said outside the US House of Representatives.

The allegations arise from a television interview, in which an anonymous US contractor described visiting a San Salvador strip club that offers sexual favours with some Secret Service agents and US military specialists in advance of Obama's March, 2011, visit.

The report said high-ranking US embassy employees also "routinely" visited the strip club.

US officials are also facing charges from a Brazilian prostitute who is set to sue the US embassy and five staff members, including three US members of the Marine Corps.

The allegations come in the wake of a sex scandal involving Secret Service and military personnel in Colombia.

Eight US agents have left the service over the Colombia allegations, in which Americans were found with as many as 20 women, thought to be prostitutes, at a Cartagena hotel.

The agents were part of a team preparing for a visit by US President Barack Obama to the Summit of the Americas earlier this month.

Another 12 military personnel are also under investigation and have had their security clearance revoked.