Aid operations in Sudan's western region of Darfur may be suspended if violence continues to escalate, Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement carried by dpa from Geneva Wednesday. The risk may be too great for the U.N.'s 11,000 humanitarian workers in Darfur to continue assisting the 2.5 million people requiring life saving assistance, according to a report posted on the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) website. dpa reported Egeland called on the international community to increase political pressure on the Khartoum government, its government-backed militias and the rebels which he said are all to blame. He urged the world to draw on past lessons like the so called U.N. safe havens in Bosnia in the 1990s which could not prevent the slaughter of Muslims by Serb forces. --More 2311 Local Time 2011 GMT
