Italy sends aid to Sudan’s Darfur region

ROME, Aug 18, 2004 (AP) — Italy is flying emergency supplies to Sudan’s conflict-ridden Darfur region to help some of the 1 million people who have been forced to flee their homes, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

The first shipment, including high-protein food, tents and a generator, reached the western part of Darfur earlier in the day, the ministry said in a statement. A second flight was scheduled to leave next week.

Italian aid group Intersos is helping the ministry provide the aid, according to the statement.

The United Nations says about 30,000 people have been killed in fighting since African rebels rose against the government in February 2003. The number of people displaced from Darfur is about 1.2 million.

Pro-government Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, have been accused of trying to drive the African Sudanese out of Darfur.