US calls on S. Africans to prevent Sudan crisis

The U.S. is calling on South Africa to help prevent a humanitarian disaster in Sudan.

Speaking Wednesday in South Africa, Princeton Lyman, the special U.S. envoy on Sudan, said civilians caught up in fighting in Sudan's Blue Nile and South Kordofan states are running out of food and medicine. Lyman says South Africa should pressure Sudan to allow in international humanitarian agencies.

Lyman says fears "the prospect of hundreds of thousands of people dying with no access to food or medicine."

Fighting between the Sudanese army and rebels who want to topple the Khartoum government started last year in the states. Groups in both states, which border the new country of South Sudan, sided with the south during a lengthy civil war but remain part of the north.

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