Travis singer visits war-torn country

Travis frontman Fran Healy today described the lack of clean water in war-torn Sudan as “unbelievable”.

The singer is in the south of the country on a week-long trip to see how money from the new Band Aid single will be spent.

Healy, 31, has toured a number of Save the Children food distribution schemes which are a lifeline for thousands of impoverished families.

But earlier this week the charity announced it was suspending its humanitarian work in a region of western Sudan after two of its staff were shot dead in an ambush.

Healy said the biggest impression on him had been made by something people take for granted in the developed world.

He told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland: “The main thing is water.

“Everywhere that we have wandered, every single person we have met, the first thing that we have asked is: ‘What are the conditions like here?’

“And they just don’t have any water.

“It’s unbelievable.”

The Scot said the main source of water was bore holes, which were dug 30ft to 40ft in the ground, and described how people travelled for up to four hours to reach them.

Healy sings on the chart-topping Band Aid single and said he wanted to put the record in context by travelling to Africa.

Save the Children said decades of civil war in southern Sudan had created one of Africa’s least developed areas, where 92% of the population live in poverty.

The charity said only two in 10 children even get to primary education and fewer still can access safe drinking water.

On Sunday, medical assistant Abhakar el Tayeb and mechanic Yacoub Abdelnabi Ahmed, both Sudanese nationals, were killed when they came under fire while travelling in humanitarian vehicles.

The African Union has launched an investigation into the incident, the second involving Save the Children workers in Darfur in the last two months.

In October, Rafe Bullick, a programme manager from the UK, and Nourredine Issa Tayeb, a Sudanese water engineer, were killed by a landmine in north-west Darfur.

The Darfur conflict, which the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, erupted in February 2003 after years of strife between farmers and herders over shrinking land and water resources in the arid region.

Sudanese authorities hope to sign a peace deal with rebels from the region in the new year following a fragile ceasefire brokered on November 9.

The government has been blamed by human rights groups for launching a vicious counter-insurgency with the Janjaweed, an Arab militia.

More than 70,000 people in Sudan have died and at least 1.8 million have fled their homes to escape the campaign of murder, rape and arson.