The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday it was giving a massive boost to aid for Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, to turn it into one of the relief agency's largest operations in the world.
The ICRC has slowly increased the number of foreign staff in the region to 15, but is now trying to bring that number up to at least 50 to provide mainly medical help for hundreds of thousands of people who have fled their homes, spokesman Juan Martinez said.
"It will become one of the biggest operations in the world once all the expatriates are there, that's for sure. It's something enormous that takes time," Martinez told AFP.
"That's almost as much as Afghanistan after the war involving the Americans three years ago, almost as important as Iraq when the conflict started there a year ago, so it is really very substantial."
"It's rare for us to step up an operation with 50 expatriates in one go, when with 40 people we would already cover a major operation," he added. ICRC expatriate staff are assisted in the region by the Sudanese Red Crescent.
The United Nations has warned of "widespread atrocities" by government-backed forces in the largely desert area of western Sudan during a year-long conflict between Khartoum and local rebels.
Khartoum had blocked access in Darfur until last week. Martinez indicated that some areas were still out of bounds to the ICRC despite "recent improvements".
The Red Cross is providing medical help to the wounded as well as support for clean water and sanitation in five locations in Darfur.
Martinez could not give an estimate of how many Sudanese were receiving help and how many victims the agency hoped to reach.
"I can't give an exact figure, because it depends on what we will find on the spot," Martinez said.
The UN estimates that the war has claimed at least 10,000 lives, forced about one million people out of their homes, and driven more than 100,000 of them to seek shelter across the border in neighbouring Chad.
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