UN lifts suspension on Sudan aid flights

UN lifts suspension on Sudan aid flights
REUTERS

NAIROBI, AUG 15: The United Nations will resume aid flights to Sudan on Wednesday, lifting a week's suspension that followed a spate of government bomb attacks on relief aircraft and compounds.

Masood Hyder, director of the U N's World Food Programme in Sudan, said on Tuesday, the government had given firm assurances that it would now be safe to fly.

"We understand that the government has notified all the relevant parties on the ground to enable us to resume flights on August 16," Hyder told Reuters from his office in Khartoum.

The U N -led relief effort, Operation Lifeline Sudan, suspended flights on August 8 after a "shower of 18 bombs" fell near a U N -aircraft in the southern town of Mapel.

The attack followed a dramatic escalation of bomb attacks on rebel-held towns in southern Sudan by government warplanes.

Hyder said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had given personal assurances that flights could be resumed safely in a letter to U N Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Rebels have been fighting Sudan's Islamic Government for 17 years, seeking greater autonomy for the mainly Christian and animist South of Africa's largest country.

An estimated two million people have been killed in the conflict and related famines. Millions are dependent on relief supplies from aid agencies which fly daily to dozens of locations to drop or distribute food.