By Louis Charbonneau
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.
The number of attacks against aid workers in the first eight months of 2008 surpassed the total for 2007. The report said this included 208 vehicle hijackings, 155 abductions of aid workers and 123 premises broken into.
"Because of this targeted violence, two major nongovernmental organizations assisting more than 500,000 civilians in Northern Darfur alone were forced to suspend their activities during the reporting period (August-October)."
SLOW DEPLOYMENT
Although the number of U.N.-African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, known as UNAMID, has been steadily increasing to 10,527 as of October 10, Ban said "conditions required for an effective peacekeeping operation remain absent in Darfur."
He said "the government and the parties (rebels) continue to pursue a military solution to the conflict, while little progress has been made in the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement" signed in May 2006.
"As violence prevails, the protection of civilians remains a grave concern," Ban's report said.
There are supposed to be 26,000 UNAMID troops and police, but U.N. officials have acknowledged that there is no hope of achieving full deployment any time soon.
"Reinforcements are slowly arriving, but the security situation and difficult environment in Darfur have delayed the arrival of equipment for incoming contingents," Ban said, adding that the U.N. was working hard to speed up deployment.
He once again called on troop-contributing countries to provide helicopters, which UNAMID desperately needs to increase its mobility in Darfur, an area roughly the size of France.
The report said an operation in August launched by Sudanese security forces to search for weapons at the Kalma displaced persons camp in Darfur led to a skirmish between camp residents and security forces. The government forces opened fire and 33 displaced persons were killed and 108 injured.
These figures included 38 children and 25 women, though U.N. officials said they had no specific figure for the death toll among women and children.
Ban urged Khartoum to comply with its obligations under international human rights and humanitarian laws, saying the incident at Kalma was "deeply regrettable".
(Editing by Anthony Boadle)
