Sudan says more food relief heading to conflict-torn Darfur region
KHARTOUM, March 14 (AFP) — Further large shipments of food will be sent to Sudan’s conflict-torn western Darfur region this week, Sudan’s top humanitarian official Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid said in remarks published on Sunday.
Hamid, quoted by the official Al Anbaa daily, said 700 tons of food would be transported in the next 72 hours from the capital Khartoum to the region’s three main cities of Al Fashir, Nyala and Ginaina.
He said relief convoys sent by Kuwait, the African Muslims Organisation, a Kuwaiti international charity, and Khartoum State’s ministry of education have already arrived in Darfur.
“The flow of relief is continuing satisfactorily but Darfur is more in need of security and stability than relief,” Hamid said.
Violence continued to wrack the region, as rebels shot and killed two police officers and wounded a third in the town of Buram in south Darfur State at dusk on Saturday, the state’s governor Adam Hamid Mussa said.
The attackers burnt down the police, posts and telegraph offices and disconnected the communication network, he was quoted as saying.
Also on Saturday, Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail accused an American aid official of siding with the rebels after he gave an alarming report on the humanitarian situation in Darfur.
Roger Winter, a top official with the US Agency for International Development (USAid) is “among those carried away with the trends of antagonism and alignment with the rebel movement,” Ismail told reporters.
Winter told US lawmakers on Thursday that atrocities being committed in the Darfur region include ethnic cleansing and “massive patterns of rape” against African girls and women by the jenjaweed militia of ethnic Arabs attacking from the north.
On March 2, the US state department said the Darfur crisis threatened one million people, and deplored the “refusal of local as well as national authorities to permit unrestricted access” to humanitarian workers.
Ismail also deplored the United States’ renewal of travel warning to Sudan because of terror threats.
“The Sudan is one of the safest countries in the world, even safer than the United States,” he said.
In February 2003 the Sudan Liberation Movement and other groups mounted a rebellion against the central government in South, West and North Darfur states after complaining Khartoum had neglected to develop their impoverished region.