More than one million children face starvation in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region because humanitarian workers cannot reach them, relief agencies estimated yesterday.
International inaction to end what has been termed genocide by the United States and some non-governmental organisations was blamed for increasing areas of the remote region being closed to outside help.
Government-backed Arab rebels have been widely accused of killing up to 70,000 black Africans since the conflict intensified. The World Health Organisation recently claimed 10,000 were dying each month from hunger and disease.
The founder of the Britain-based charity Kids for Kids, Patricia Parker, described the situation as horrendous and 'a crisis that is being ignored'.
Save the Children Fund UK spokesman Paul Hetherington confirmed the magnitude of the problem by estimating that at least half of the 2 million to 2.5 million people trapped in villages by fighting were children and that almost three-quarters were inaccessible to humanitarian workers bringing food, water and medicine.
'Quite a lot are inaccessible to us because of the security conditions,' Mr Hetherington explained from London. 'We had to pull out of one of the main areas we've been working in a few days ago because of the threat of bombing. Several months ago we were unable to reach 40 per cent of the population and it's more like 70 per cent now.'
