UP TO 12,000 refugees from Sudan’s Darfur region have fled across the border to neighbouring Chad after the latest air strikes by the Sudanese military and thousands more may be on their way, the UN refugee agency said yesterday.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan today told the UN Human Rights Council to immediately address the escalating atrocities in Darfur by sending an independent team of investigators to the volatile Sudanese region.

THE UN Human Rights Council will hold a special session on violations in Sudan’s strife-torn western region of Darfur today, after a rebuke from Kofi Annan that it has not paid enough attention to rights violations in the province.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan today opens an international meeting in Ethiopia to discuss the situation in Darfur and to push again for UN peacekeepers to replace a beleaguered African force in Sudan’s troubled western region.