SUDAN: Cholera kills over 180 in Akobo

More than 180 people have died of cholera in southern Sudan's Akobo area since 6 April when the first cases were cited, humanitarian workers in the region told IRIN. A doctor with the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC), Margaret Ito, said many of them died because they could not make it to the hospital in Akobo town. Some of the villages were between four to six km from the hospital, she said. At the hospital itself, nine people had died from the disease, MSF-B told IRIN. A further 505 cases had been admitted. Meanwhile, the Sudanese parliament on Wednesday approved a further three-month extension of a state of emergency in the country's western Darfur area. The extension is aimed at allowing the government to complete security measures in the area, press reports noted. A Sudanese embassy spokesman in Nairobi told IRIN that Darfur is calm and that the warring sides, mainly Arab nomads and Messalit tribesmen, have signed a peace agreement. "The government is planning to convene a conference in the first week of May. It will address the repercussions of the recent [February] clashes and come up with ways to avoid a recurrence," the spokesman, Mansour al-Bolad, said. About 131 people were killed in the clashes. In another development, Kenya Airways announced on Thursday that from 1 May it will introduce daily flights to the Kenyan town of Lokichoggio, the base for aid workers in south Sudan.