Landmark aid deal for Sudan

The Sudanese government and the country's main rebel group - the SPLA - have signed a landmark agreement giving aid agencies unfettered access to hundreds of thousands of victims of countries civil war.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said the deal would allow it to feed an additional 500,000 people.

The agency already supplies food to three million civilians in Sudan.

But the government bans aid workers from visiting about 60 locations in the south of the country.

The agreement means humanitarian agencies will now be able to access those areas for the first time in 13 years.

The civil war in Sudan began in 1983. It is estimated that two million people have died in the conflict.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service