UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged donors yesterday to fund a bigger African force to help end bloodshed in Darfur, where experts say hundreds are still dying daily nine months after the mission first deployed.

Nato allies agreed today to consider offering logistical help to the African Union’s peacekeeping force in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

Five African heads of state and thousands of mourners paid their last respects to Senegal’s founding president, Leopold Sedar Senghor, who was buried today.