THE UN refugee agency is facing a race against time to help more than 100,000 impoverished Sudanese refugees who have spilled across the border into Chad to escape increasing violence in their homeland.

Officials in Australia today said they had treated four asylum seekers at an Outback detention centre, including a child, after they tried to harm themselves in what is believed to be a group suicide attempt.

The UN is to start using helicopters to deliver aid to remote mountain regions in northern Afghanistan.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has warned that the advance of the opposition Northern Alliance in Afghanistan is making it more difficult to alleviate the suffering of the country’s impoverished population.

The United Nations refugee agency says nearly 2,000 Eritrean refugees have left camps in Sudan to return home as a major repatriation campaign begins.