A special United Nations commission has decided that two years of violence in the western Sudan region of Darfur was not genocide but "crimes against humanity with ethnic dimensions", according to leaks of the report in the US.

The Sudanese government raided two refugee camps in war-torn Darfur yesterday, raising fears that the ceasefire between the government and rebel groups had ended.

Separated from her family and her home destroyed, Halima is just one of the thousands of elderly victims of the nightmare that has ravaged Sudan. She talks to Kate Holt and Sarah Hughes

At last: Colin Powell uses the word the world's human rights bodies have been demanding as US toughens its stance on the slaughter in Sudan

In a seemingly deserted and destroyed village in Darfur, Bahid Ali Hamed, 91, steps out of the shadows and salutes. An Englishman, he explains, once told him always to salute when he saw foreigners and he is determined to observe protocol, even when barefoot and wearing a ragged, frayed tunic.

The men of Darfur have gone. After the Janjaweed Arab militias and Sudanese military descended on these villages, teenagers, youths and grown men vanished. Many joined the rebel groups to avenge their dead relatives but others were murdered and their bodies left to carrion-eaters.

The UN must conclude this week that the Sudan government has failed to fulfill its obligations