Sudan accused of atrocities

A leading British campaigner on humanitarian issues, Baroness Cox, has accused the Sudanese government of atrocities against the Dinka people of southern Sudan.

After a visit to the rebel province of Bahr el Ghazal, Lady Cox told the BBC that she'd seen the bodies of hundreds of people strewn in the streets of villages raided in the past few weeks by the Sudanese army.

She accused the Islamic leadership in Khartoum of a systematic and cynical policy of destruction amounting to genocide.

Lady Cox is president of a Swiss-based relief agency, Christian Solidarity International, and a former deputy speaker of the House of Lords.

In Nairobi, Christian Solidarity released a report saying more than three-hundred-thousand people in Bahr el Ghazal had been driven from their homes, or killed or enslaved, since last month.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service