The World - News from Dec. 6, 1988

An airlift organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross carried supplies to starving refugees in southern Sudan, gripped by famine caused by a five-year-old civil war. It marked the first time since the Sudan People’s Liberation Army began an anti-government rebellion in early 1983 that planes flew with guarantees from both sides that they wouldn’t be shot at. The airlift, which will continue indefinitely, comes after Sudanese Prime Minister Sadek Mahdi accepted a preliminary peace plan drawn up by rebel leaders and members of Sudan’s ruling coalition in talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.