KHARTOUM, May 23 (Reuters) - A Sudanese official was quoted as saying on Tuesday that 100,000 Eritrean refugees had arrived in Sudan to escape their country's border war with Ethiopia.

Al-Rai al-Akher newspaper quoted Chol Deng, state minister of social planning, as saying that the number of refugees could swell to 300,000 in less than a month.

Deng's figure was far higher than Sunday's estimate by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which said about 15,000 Eritreans had crossed the border into eastern Sudan.

State television said on Monday that

JOHANNESBURG, 23 May (IRIN) - An estimated 2.5 million people in Angola have been displaced around the country since the resumption of hostilities between government forces and UNITA rebels in December 1998.
According to the latest report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Angola on Tuesday, one million of those people have been officially confirmed as internally displaced persons (IDPs). They are currently living in camps, often in squalid conditions, in 120 locations around the country, of which

Ghion Hagos, PANA Correspondent
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PANA) - The special envoy of the Europeans Union Tuesday said both Ethiopia and Eritrea have shown readiness to resume peace talks under the auspices of the OAU.

"There exists a condition for the resumption of the OAU peace process," Senator Rino Serri told reporters before leaving for Asmara.

He met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi during his overnight stay in Addis Ababa. He had met with Eritrea President Issaias Afeworki in Asmara early Monday.

Serri also had discussion with the special

Highlights

• Rapid Assessment Report of Critical Needs draft report published
• Number of confirmed IDPs since restart of hostilities reaches 1 million
• WFP proposes increase in food beneficiaries to 1.5 million from 1 million
• Food aid delivery severely affected by runway damage at Kuito airport
• UNCHR technical team visits Angola to examine role in assisting IDPs
• Ambushes and landmine incidents reported in Uíge, Benguela, Moxico and Huila
  

Report on Rapid Assessment of Critical Needs

During the last week of April, the UN

BEIJING (May 23) XINHUA - The Red Cross Society of China ( RCSC) today announced a 50,000-U.S.-dollar donation for disaster victims in Pakistan.

A RCSC spokesman said the donation was provided to Pakistan because the country has been suffering from severe drought since April. The disaster has claimed dozens of lives and killed more than 600,000 livestock.

Donations have reached the Red Crescent Society of Pakistan. Last week, the RCSC pledged a 50,000-U.S dollar donation and a 30,000 U.S. dollar donation respectively for disaster victims in Romania and Djibouti.

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Quoted text from this briefing note may be attributed to the UNHCR spokesperson named below
Kris Janowski

1. Sudan/Eritrea

UNHCR staff have so far registered 11,500 Eritrean refugees in four transit centres in Sudan, but we estimate that up to 20,000 people have arrived over the past few days. Tens of thousands more may be on their way after the fall on Sunday of the border town of Omhajer. On Monday, UNHCR registered 150 people arriving from the town

From IOM Press Briefing Notes
by Niurka Piñeiro, IOM Spokesperson

IOM teams working around the clock the past six days have evacuated over 5,000 people from areas affected by deadly flooding around Betun near the West Timor border. The number of confirmed dead now stands at 124. At least half were East Timorese refugees, mostly women and children. Fifty-three persons were buried on Friday, 19 May.

IOM now has 32 trucks operating in Malaka Tengah, 10 of them deployed from relief operations in neighbouring East Timor. Three are being used to ferry relief supplies for other agencies

JAKARTA, May 23 (AFP) - One man was shot dead as Indonesian security forces fired shots to disband crowds that formed following two explosions in the riot-torn eastern town of Ambon on Tuesday, the Antara news agency reported.

The victim was a pedicab driver who was shot on a main road some one kilometre (0.6 miles) away from where a makeshift bomb was thrown on a street in the Pohon Puleh area of downtown Ambon, the news agency said.

The first bomb, and another which was thrown 20 minutes later, caused no damage as they exploded in the middle

KIGALI, May 23 (AFP) - Rwandan-backed rebels have agreed to pull out of the troubled city of Kisangani, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), joining an accord reached earlier by Rwanda and Uganda, a rebel spokesman said Tuesday.
Rwanda and Uganda, ostensible allies in the rebellion against DRC President Laurent Kabila, signed the agreement Monday to pull out of Kisangani following recent clashes between the two armies, but a simultaneous pullout by the rebels, who control the city, was not assured.

Kin Kiey Mulumba, spokesman for the main

by Salah Omar

LAFFA CAMP, Sudan, May 23 (AFP) - Thousands of Eritrean refugees in sun-baked camps in eastern Sudan are suffering from lack of shelter and food while more refugees cross the border fleeing the Ethiopian invasion.

"We will return home as soon as peace prevails," 15-year-old school girl Helen Berhe told AFP, explaining that conditions in Laffa camp, about seven kilometres (three miles) from the border, "are unbearable and humiliating."

Laffa camp, in Kassala state, is set up on an open strip of land with not a single tent, leaving refugees to