GENEVA/ KHARTOUM, 6 August 2003 — Thousands of people face starvation across Sudan as malnutrition rates climb to levels close to the disaster year of 1998 when famine swept key regions of the country, a United Nations agency said yesterday.

The World Food Program said an already difficult situation due to the decades-old civil war and drought had been made worse by devastating floods in a largely agricultural region east of the capital, Khartoum.

But the agency’s capacity to help was limited by a poor response to an appeal it launched in April to international donors for $130 million to help 3.2 million people in Sudan, WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said in Geneva.

So far, only $40 million had been received, which meant some food rations to people in need might have to be cut back. “We hope we are not looking at a repetition of the 1998 disaster, when thousands of people died,” Berthiaume told reporters.

Up to 32 percent of the population in parts of the south were suffering from malnutrition. “We start ringing alarm bells normally when it reaches 15 percent, so that shows how bad the situation is,” she said.

The floods from the River Gash which have swept through the town of Kassala, 450 km from the capital, and left two-thirds of its 500,000 population homeless, had increased the need for emergency food supplies.

The floods at Kassala, which the Sudanese government has declared a disaster area, followed heavy rains and flooding in the White Nile region south of Khartoum in which several people died when their houses were swept away.

Berthiaume said the WFP was moving stocks of food to Kassala area to help the most vulnerable people, especially children, but relief teams were unable to reach many areas because roads had been made impassable by the waters.

Interior Minister Maj. Gen. Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein told state radio yesterday that the city needed $150 million to rebuild the city. Hussein made the announcement at a meeting between Kassala state officials and Sudanese President Omar Bashir in Khartoum, the radio added.

Meanwhile, 20 students from Sudan’s Science and Technology University, detained during Sunday’s unrest, have been freed, police said yesterday. The 20 were held on suspicion of involvement in riots which culminated in the torching of two floors of the university’s engineering faculty building by students demanding that their diploma studies be upgraded to degree level.