Darfur Violence For 2008 -- The Numbers

A couple and their four-month old son stand in front of their hut at Djabal refugee camp near Gos Beida in eastern Chad, June 20, 2008. (Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Darfur Violence Caused 230,000 To Flee In '08: U.N.
-- Yahoo News/Reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Nearly a quarter of a million civilians have been forced to flee violence in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region this year as the conflict shows no sign of abating, the U.N. chief said in a report on Tuesday.

In a bleak new report to the U.N. Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the humanitarian situation in Darfur was desperate, while international peacekeepers and aid workers found themselves increasingly at risk from attack.

U.N. officials say that as many as 300,000 people have died and some 2.5 million fled their homes since violence broke out in Darfur in 2003, when mostly African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government.

The Sudanese government says 10,000 have died.

Ban's report said that a spike in violence in Darfur has caused more than 230,000 people to flee this year, at a rate of around 1,000 per day. U.N. officials said it was not clear how many of these people were newly displaced and how many were "re-displaced" from other camps.

"Many of them have fled to overcrowded camps near large towns or in some cases sought shelter in the desert until clashes subsided," the report said.

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My Comment: After 5 years, and the conflict still goes on. This has the makings of a "Congo-like" situation, in which normalcy on the ground is perpetual war and suffering.