Aid Agencies Pull Out of Parts of Darfur

Aid agencies fearing an upsurge of fighting in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region have suspended operations and evacuated staff from the volatile Jebel Marra area in West Darfur, U.N. officials said Friday.

The area has 160,000 refugees who rely on food handouts.

“We have pulled out all our staff from Jebel Marra” and airlifted out 88 other aid workers, said Barry Came, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program in Sudan.

Jan Pronk, the U.N. envoy for Darfur, said Thursday that the region could fall into anarchy unless the 15-member U.N. Security Council took bold action. He also said the African Union needed to send more troops to the area than the planned 3,320.

But the African Union said Friday in Addis Ababa that it lacked funds to expand its peace force and that its existing peace monitoring operation was short of money.

Conflict erupted in Darfur when Arab militiamen, apparently backed by the government, took on rebels who launched a revolt in 2003 against Khartoum, accusing it of neglect and unjust treatment.

The U.N. says 70,000 people have died of disease and malnutrition since March, but Khartoum disputes that figure.