Sudan briefly opens Shilluk to food aid deliveries

NAIROBI, June 4 (Reuters) – Relief agencies delivered tonnes of food aid to thousands made homeless by fighting in the isolated Shilluk Kingdom after Sudan granted a three-day window for the airlift, aid officials said on Friday.

The United Nations estimates up to 70,000 people have been driven from their homes in the Upper Nile region since the army and government-backed militiamen began fighting Sudanese rebels there in March.

Aid agencies said the already desperate situation could worsen as the rainy season approaches.

“It’s quite clear, though we were able to access 24,000 people, there are many thousands more who remain out of our reach at this time,” World Food Programme spokesman Marcus Prior said.

WFP said it delivered more than 370 tonnes of food, but two aid flights were cancelled because the government’s “window” had closed. A similar aid effort was cancelled last week because of a military operation in the region.

Prior said aid workers who visited Shilluk this week found devastated communities.

“It’s a situation similar to reports coming out of Darfur, of villages burned to the ground, possessions destroyed and left as people have fled to places of relative safety,” he said.

The area is supposed to be covered by the ceasefire agreement between the Islamist government and the main southern rebel group, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), but the truce has been repeatedly violated.

The fighting pits the army and militiamen loyal to the Khartoum government against the SPLA, which has been pushing for greater autonomy for the mainly animist and Christian south for more than 20 years.

This conflict is distinct from that in the western Darfur region, where more than 100,000 black Africans have been displaced and U.N. investigators have accused Sudanese troops and Arab militias of massive human rights violations.