BBC News Online: World: Africa

Sudan famine takes its toll

Relief workers for the United Nations World Food Programme say they are cooking food for famine victims too weak to cook for themselves.

The WFP's Deputy Director for Africa, Tesema Negash, says about 700 people are arriving each day at the government-held town of Wau.

"Many continue to arrive in horrific physical condition having walked for weeks eating the few greens and wild foods they've been able to get their hands on," she said.

"Some of these people are so thin and malnourished when they arrive they don't even have the energy to stand in line for food, never mind attempt to cook a meal."

The WFP says that in response it has set up a special feeding programme with makeshift kitchens around Wau to cater for the townspeople and an influx of villagers from the surrounding region.

The agency is airlifting 500 tonnes of food into Wau each week, allowing it to keep three therapeutic and five supplementary feeding centres fully stocked.

Aid flights have also dropped food to villages near Ajiep, 40 km north of Wau at the famine's epicentre. This was designed to ease congestion at the feeding centre in Ajiep itself, the WFP said.

Massive aid operation

Earlier this month the WFP revised its estimate of how many people it had to feed, saying that it now had to provide for 2.5m people in areas of Sudan controlled by both the government and the rebels.

It says it will need $154 million to provide emergency aid to southern Sudan until April 1999.

The European Union made a pledge of $36.4 million this week, bringing confirmed contributions to $115.8 million, and leaving a funding shortfall of $38.8 million.

Earlier this week, a senior American government official told a US Congressional hearing that the international food aid programme to Sudan would would be the largest in history.

The Sudanese government and the main southern rebel group, the SPLA, have declared a temporary ceasefire in the worst affected areas to allow aid through.

However, BBC correspondents say not all the parties in the conflict are keeping their promise to suspend fighting.

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