Disasters Sudan

Starvation of "apocalyptic" proportions is endangering as many as 11 million Sudanese, but their government is blocking international food deliveries, U.S. relief officials said Thursday. Administration officials, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, said Sudan's military government has derailed a U.S.-led rescue effort under U.N. auspices that would have saved many Sudanese from hunger.

Starvation of "apocalyptic" proportions is endangering as many as 11 million Sudanese, but their government is blocking international food deliveries, U.S. relief officials said Thursday. Administration officials, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, said Sudan's military government has derailed a U.S.-led rescue effort under U.N. auspices that would have saved many Sudanese from hunger.

Mennonite Central Committee warehouses that were overflowing with relief supplies in the middle of 1988 were empty by the end of the year as a result of a series of disasters that occurred at the rate of one a month. By the time 1988 ended, the Akron, Pa.-based agency had sent 1,500 tons of aid to victims of disasters in Sudan, Bangladesh, Jamaica, the Philippines, Nicaragua and Soviet Armenia and had committed about $1.47 million in cash to help them.