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UNITED NATIONS - Violence has escalated in Sudan's Darfur region since January, throwing another 160,000 people out of their homes and forcing 4.2 million people, about two-thirds of the population, to go on relief aid, the United Nations reported.
Some 2.1 million people have been uprooted from their villages in addition to the more than 200,000 who have fled the country, mainly to neighbouring Chad, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said.
Particularly worrying are attacks against relief workers, which have increased 150 percent over the past year, OCHA said.
In June, one out of every six convoys leaving provincial capitals in Darfur was hijacked or ambushed by "armed groups," a term usually applied to bandits or anti-government rebels. Since January, some 64 vehicles have been hijacked, with 132 staff temporarily detained, often at gunpoint.
"This kind of lawlessness by armed groups of different political affiliations has forced relief organisations to suspend programming and relocate out of dangerous environments on 15 occasions, temporarily depriving over 1 million beneficiaries of life-saving assistance," OCHA said.
There are 13,000 relief workers in Darfur trying to reach 4 million people. As a result of the violence on the ground, aid workers are forced to rely on expensive helicopter transport to keep operations going, OCHA said.
"While political and peace-keeping initiatives have made some progress, and bureaucratic obstacles to humanitarian work have decreased, these violent attacks against aid workers are jeopardizing the whole operation," said John Holmes, the head of OCHA and the UN emergency relief coordinator.
What was needed was an effective cease-fire, Holmes said, adding that "rebel groups and the government could and should choose now to stop the violence."
Darfur's three main rebel factions have split into more than a dozen groups in disputes that have fuelled lawlessness in the remote, arid region.
UN and African Union envoys have set a self-imposed August deadline to launch peace negotiations and have called an international meeting in Libya for July 15-16 to help move the uphill process along.
Some 200,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict, which began in 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms after accusing the central government of neglect.
Khartoum then mobilized Arab militias, called Janjaweed, accused of rape, pillaging, arson and murder to quell the revolt.
Sudan has agreed to a combined United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force of 20,000 troops and police, which is not expected to be in place until next year, to bolster the underequipped Africa Union force of 7000 now in Darfur.
- REUTERS
