دارفور من الجنجويد الي الجراد

News Article by AFP posted on August 11, 2004 at 00:30:04: EST (-5 GMT)

AfterJanaweed, locusts descend on Sudan: UN

NEW YORK, Aug 10 (AFP) - One million people are displaced in
Darfur, 50,000 are dead and the United Nations said Tuesday that
locusts have invaded Sudan.

"The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says
the locusts have entered Chad because of winds and aid workers are
concerned that these winds will eventually take them on into Darfur,
Sudan," Secretary General Kofi Annan's spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

Locusts that inflicted serious crop damage in Mauritania, Mali
and Niger have entered Chad, already afflicted by a humanitarian
crisis.

The United Nations estimates that up to 50,000 people have been
killed since Sudan's army forces and the Janjaweed militias cracked
down on a rebellion by minority tribes which erupted in Darfur in
February 2003. The government vehemently disputes that figure.

Another 1.2 million people have fled their homes in Sudan and up
to 200,000 more have been settled in makeshift camps in neighboring
Chad, already hit by the locusts, the United Nations says.

An army of locusts threatens to worsen Sudan's food supply.
Gigantic swarms from North Africa have hit Mauritania the worst.
Millions of the finger-length insects have deluged the desert
nations at the height of their planting seasons, devouring seedlings
and standing crops of millet and sorghum.

Eckhard said that according to the World Food Organization, aid
promised by donor countries at a recent conference in Algiers "is
starting to trickle in."

The meeting, of representatives of several Western African
countries, launched an appeal to the international community for at
least 58 million dollars to set up a program to battle the locusts,
Eckhard said.

Chad and Niger appealed for international aid Tuesday to battle
the locusts, warning their already-compromised populations could
suffer food shortages if they go unchecked.

"Chad is imploring our friends and international agencies to
help us battle these ravaging beasts and dispel the threat of famine
for our people," Foreign Minister Nagoum Yamassoum told diplomats in
the Chadian capital N'Djamena.

Chad's food supplies are already exhausted owing to the influx
of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the troubled Darfur
region of eastern neighbor Sudan.

Some 20,000 hectares of cropland have already been destroyed by
the locusts.