'The world's hottest war'

2004-03-19 14:36

Nairobi - The conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region "is now the world's greatest humanitarian and human rights catastrophe", a top UN official said in Nairobi on Friday.

Mukesh Kapila, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, also told journalists that the Darfur conflict, which erupted in February 2003, was "possibly the world's hottest war," which had affected well over a million people.

Systematic rapes and other attacks on civilians, he said, were "tantamount to war crimes."

- AFP