New US warning on Sudan

A senior American official has warned that parts of Sudan could soon face a crop failure comparable to the catastrophic drought of the 1980s, when 250,000 people died.

The official, Andrew Natsios - speaking at the end of the first US visit of its kind to Sudan for 12 years - said that failed rains threatened famine in parts of the north, while government attacks on villages were creating hunger in the south.

Mr Natsios told reporters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, that if the crops failed this year, then there was the possibility of a catastrophe next year.

He has been assessing the humanitarian situation in Sudan, which has been ravaged by 18 years of civil war between the government in the Islamic north, and rebels from the Christian and animist south.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service