"An estimated 180,000 people have died and 2 million have been displaced in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan where militias have targeted civilians in attacks the United Nations warns could rival the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which more than 800,000 people died.

"The people of Darfur are suffering a catastrophe -- terrible crimes have been committed against them," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said.

The killings of mostly black African Muslims have been blamed on an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed. Like their victims, the Janjaweed are Muslim, but are accused of ethnic atrocities, including burning and destroying villages in parts of Darfur and of slaughtering men, women and children."