Human-rights groups claim that around a million people from Darfur have been displaced from their homes, with over 100,000 fleeing across the western border into Chad. By one estimate, over 10,000 have been killed, and refugees report frequent mass rape. Mounted militias known as janjaweed have committed the worst atrocities, but the UN accuses government forces of aerial bombardment of villages, arming and co-ordinating the militias, and a “strategy of systematic and deliberate starvation”. In one camp housing some 1,700 displaced Darfurians, eight or nine children are dying each day, according to UN monitors who visited in late April. If the crisis continues through the rainy season, which begins in May, the resulting meagre harvest could lead to famine among Darfur's 6m people. The UN's humanitarian co-ordinator, Mukesh Kapila, has described the situation in the region as "the worst humanitarian and human-rights catastrophe in the world".
