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An adviser to Barack Obama has resigned after a Scottish newspaper quoted her calling rival US Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton "a monster".

Samantha Power has expressed "deep regret" over the comments and said she had tried to retract them.

The Scotsman newspaper quoted Ms Power as saying: "She is a monster, too-that is off the record - she is stooping to anything."

Ms Power is a Harvard professor who has advised Obama on foreign policy.

Announcing her resignation as an adviser, she said: "Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign."

Ms Power, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003, was speaking to the Scotsman about Mrs Clinton's campaign strategy in Ohio, a state the New York senator won in Tuesday's primary elections.

A spokesman for the Obama campaign, Bill Burton, said: "Senator Obama decries such characterisations, which have no place in this campaign."

Shortly before Ms Power stepped down, advisers to Mrs Clinton had held a conferencecall with reporters in which they called for her resignation.

Ms Power had already issued an apology and Obama's campaign had already condemned her remarks.

Comments made by Ms Power about Obama's Iraq strategy in an interview with the BBC earlier this week have also caused a stir.

Ms Power said the Illinois senator's position that he would withdraw all troops within 16 months was a "best-case scenario" that he would revisit if he became president.

The Clinton camp criticised her comments as inconsistent with those of Obama on the campaign trail.

"He has attacked me continuously for having no hard exit date, and now we learn he doesn't have one, in fact he doesn't have a plan at all," Mrs Clinton told reporters while campaigning in Mississippi.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe responded that Obama's plan to withdraw about two brigades a month if elected was a "rock solid commitment" to US voters.

Senior Democrats fear that weeks of attacks and mudslinging between the two camps could damage the party and cost it support in November's presidential election.

Howard Dean, chairman of the national Democratic Party, has warned that the tone of the campaign "may get nastier" and that the party must seek to prevent that happening.