Massive aid urgently needed in Darfur, says NGO

Displaced people in the Darfur region of western Sudan are in "extreme danger", while emergency aid needed to ensure their survival is lacking, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). Access for aid workers was "extremely limited" and "the amount of assistance and the number of humanitarian actors are still too weak", said MSF in a statement on Tuesday. "This dire situation can only be addressed thanks to a massive mobilisation of international agencies and a much broader access to the region." About one million people have been displaced in Darfur in the last year due to militia and army attacks, aerial bombardment of villages and fighting between rebels and the army. In the last few days, 10,000 newly displaced have arrived in the town of Murnei, western Darfur, where some 30,000 have been camped for several weeks. Several patients had required emergency surgery, but it was delayed for 48 hours because security conditions prevented their transfer out of the town, MSF reported. Field teams had observed "catastrophic mortality rates" among the internally displaced persons (IDPs: more than two per 10,000 per day), due to displacement, "critical living conditions" and inadequate food supplies. MSF's team found a total of 258 severely malnourished and 1,190 moderately malnourished children at several sites, but were only able to treat 144 severely malnourished and 350 moderately malnourished children in Murnei and Zalingei, the NGO reported. Water was also in short supply, with many of the IDPs living in makeshift shelters near riverbeds that are almost completely dried up due to the dry season. Last week, the Sudanese government said the war in Darfur was over, the government was in control of the whole region, and promised to open up a number of "corridors" to allow humanitarian aid into the region. Both the region's rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, which claim to control much of rural Darfur, then immediately launched new offensives.