1.65 million people displaced by Darfur conflict: UN

KHARTOUM, Dec 15 (AFP) — Some 1.65 million people have now been displaced the nearly two-year-old conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur and 650 million more been affected by the fighting, the United Nations said Wednesday.

A makeshift camp for internally displaced people, Sudan’s Darfur region.

But despite persistent fighting, relief agencies have managed to reach nearly 80 percent of those affected, said Radhia Achouri, spokesperson for UN envoy Jan Pronk.

Some 60 percent of those affected now have access to primary health care and 52 percent have access to secondary health care, Achouri added.

Relief staff deployed in the region now total 6,653, 788 of them expatriate staff.

“Most of the under-served areas remain rebel-held which have not been accessible to UN agencies because of a series of security incidents and a delay in obtaining agreement by the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA),” one of the two main rebel factions, the spokesperson said.

“Increased banditry and deterioration in the security situation continue to pose a major threat to improvement of the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”

The report cited the recent killing of two aid officials employed by the British charity, Save the Children, and reports of more fighting in villages near the South Darfur state capital of Nyala on December 12 and 13.

Humanitarian agencies report that pro-governmment Arab militias entered some sections of Kalma, a camp for displaced persons outside Nyala, Monday evening and “began randomly shooting in the air before looting personal belongings and livestock,” the UN said.

The settlement hosts some 80,000 people, all of them from non-Arab minority groups suspected of supporting the rebels.