Militia raids turn Sudan villages into ghost towns

HUNDREDS of villages in the Darfur region of western Sudan have been abandoned after a year-and-a-half of attacks by Arab militias, known as the janjaweed.

The attacks have driven off the black Africans who make up the majority of Darfur's six million people.

Shiga Karo, a village about 80 miles east of the Chad-Sudan border, is now virtually deserted. Before Sudanese air force planes bombed it repeatedly in February and March, it was one of northern Darfur's few symbols of stable prosperity. It had a clean and seemingly limitless supply of groundwater, thousands of goats, cattle and camels, a bustling market and huge farms of millet and sorghum, all surrounded by rocky hills to hold back the desert.