U.N.: 300,000 Have Died in Darfur Since 2006

by Jarrett Martineau | April 23, 2008 at 04:33 am

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Despite a global public relations campaign to bring awareness to the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, living conditions may have worsened rather than improved, and deaths in the region since 2006 could, shockingly, have been underreported by as many as 100,000 people.

The number of deaths in Sudan's Darfur region since 2006 may have been underestimated by as much as 50 percent, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said Tuesday.

An man injured in clashes with tribal fighters outside the African Union Mission in southern Darfur in 2007.

In March, international figures, including U.N. data, put the death toll in Darfur at 200,000, with another 2.5 million people displaced.

But 300,000 are believed to have died in the tribal conflict in the past two years, said John Holmes, who also is the United Nations emergency relief coordinator.

Holmes said sexual violence has increased and food allotments for civilians affected by the civil war will be halved in a few days.

Holmes gave the U.N. Security Council an update on conditions in the western Sudan region, revisiting a report he gave a year ago.

"I am sad to say that the humanitarian situation remains as grim today as it was then, if not more so," he said.

So far in 2008, 100,000 civilians have fled their homes, many not for the first time.