GENEVA, July 1: About 10,000 more people are likely to die over the coming month in Sudan's strife-ridden Darfur region unless a massive international aid operation with military backing gets off the ground swiftly, a global health official said on Thursday.

"We anticipate that if things go ahead as they are at the moment, 10,000 people will die in the next month," the World Health Organization's top emergencies expert, David Nabarro, said after visiting the region in western Sudan.

Nabarro estimated that a "strong and effective" relief operation could bring the death rate down to about 3,000 a month, which would be more in keeping with other emergencies.

Nabarro, who had earlier briefed UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who visited Darfur on Thursday, emphasized that huge logistics and air support were needed to tackle the threat of cholera, dysentery, malaria and to provide health care for about 1.2 million displaced people.

"The scale of operation in terms of personnel, helicopters, trucks, communications is really way beyond what we the UN can ourselves do," he said, pointing out that logistics in crises in the Balkans, East Timor or Afghanistan had been provided by an international military force.

"It's bigger than the Balkans and it's bigger than Afghanistan," Nabarro added. "Somehow, we the United Nations have to build an infrastructure that's big enough to give the basic needs for life to a million people plus in awful locations in an area the size of France." -AFP