UN seeks far more aid for Sudan’s Darfur region

UNITED NATIONS, April 12 (Reuters) – U.N. agencies on Monday more than quadrupled their estimates of the aid needed to deal with a humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, where Arab militias are looting and burning African villages.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs set a new target of $115 million to supply food, health care, farm aid and other urgently needed relief supplies to Darfur, superseding an earlier campaign to raise $23 million, launched in September, U.N. officials said.

“The United Nations and its partners have had to drastically increase the overall amount of the appeal due to the growing needs of the individuals displaced from their homes in the region and the communities that are hosting them,” said Stephanie Bunker, spokeswoman for the U.N. aid coordination office.

Governments have so far pledged $32 million — more than had initially been sought, Bunker said.

The fighting in Darfur, which started in February 2003, has driven more than 700,000 Sudanese from their homes to other parts of Sudan and has forced more than 100,000 others over the border into eastern Chad, the United Nations says.

U.N. agencies asked for a separate $30 million in aid last week to cope with the Darfur refugees in Chad.

Jan Egeland, the world body’s humanitarian affairs chief, told the U.N. Security Council last week that Arab militias were conducting an organized “scorched earth” campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur and that the Sudanese government was doing little to stop it.

U.N. and other aid groups say they have been able to help only about a third of those in need because of the violence in the area and restrictions on aid workers’ movements.

The situation should be improved by a humanitarian cease-fire which began on Sunday. Rebel leaders and the Sudan government in Khartoum said the truce appeared to be holding.