UN mounts probe into atrocities in western Sudan

GENEVA, April 2 (AFP) — The UN said it was to investigate allegations of widespread atrocities by government-backed militia in Sudan’s Darfur region, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes.

“Given the urgency of the situation the High Commissioner is hoping to deploy the fact-finding mission in the coming days,” said Jose Diaz, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday.

Diaz said the acting High Commissioner Bertrand Ramcharan wanted access to western Sudan, amid mounting reports from aid workers, advocacy groups and refugees of a scorched earth campaign involving government forces and militia.

Government-backed militia are killing, raping and looting local inhabitants from four local ethnic groups and systematically forcing them out of their villages, according to Human Rights Watch and UN aid workers in region who witnessed some attacks.

Aid agencies Friday also launched an appeal for 30 million dollars from donor governments to step up help for hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

The aid is primarily aimed at 110,000 refugees from Darfur who have fled across the border into Chad, amid limited access to western Sudan.

“We estimate that there are 1.2 million people who need aid in the region, but we are only reaching 300,000 of them for security reasons,” said Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme (WFP).

International aid workers were only allowed to three main cities in the largely arid desert area where clusters of displaced people had gathered, but were not allowed further afield, according to a UN relief official who returned from Darfur this week.

An estimated 670,000 people have been forced from their homes in Darfur, according to the UN.