Red Cross airlifts food aid to Darfur refugees

The Red Cross said today it had begun airlifting food supplies to refugees in the violence-wracked Darfur region, saying a rising number of attacks on aid convoys made it too risky to move the food by road.

Paul Conneally, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said a chartered Russian plane had left Khartoum early today carrying the first shipment of a planned 4,000 tons of food aid.