KHARTOUM, Oct 16: Sudan on Saturday questioned U.N. estimates that up to 70,000 people had died from hunger and disease in its remote Darfur region since a rebellion began 20 months ago.

David Nabarro, head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) health crisis action group in Geneva, said on Friday the monthly death rate in Darfur was about 10,000, blaming malnutrition and disease. He said the figure of 70,000 did not take into account deaths from violence.

But Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the information was not correct and when the government asked the WHO's Khartoum office for details, they said the information had not come from them.

"When we checked with the office of the WHO here they told us they have no information. This information never came from them," Ismail told reporters in Khartoum. "They are the ones who are on the ground here. They know what is going on."

He said the government would investigate whether the WHO was under pressure to issue false figures. "We are not going to leave these issues until they are tackled," he said.

After years of skirmishes between Arab nomads and mostly non-Arab farmers over scarce resources in arid Darfur, rebels took up arms, accusing Khartoum of neglect and of using mounted Arab tribal militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages.

Khartoum admits arming some militias to fight the rebels but denies any links to the Janjaweed, calling them bandits.-Reuters