Actress and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow expressed outrage Wednesday that no effective peacekeeping force has been sent to Darfur almost four years after atrocities started.

According to some estimates, the violence in Darfur has killed 400,000 and left more than 2 million homeless.

Farrow, 61, said peacekeepers should be sent immediately to halt "genocidal violence" that has spread from Sudan's Darfur province into neighboring eastern Chad.

"We're seeing atrocities of an indescribable kind," said Farrow. She just returned from a visit to Chad after an earlier trip to Darfur.

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FARROW'S ACCOUNT

In a telephone interview from her home in Connecticut, Farrow said 60 villages were burned to the ground, forcing thousands to flee. She said she found some people "clustered under trees, dazed and terrified."

It was apparent, she said, that the war being carried out by Arab militias in Darfur since 2003 now encompasses Chad's eastern region with militias from both countries banding together.

Refugees from Darfur who fled across the border to Chad, Farrow said, are being terrorized anew. The victims are not combatants, she said, but innocent villagers.

The attackers are "heavily, heavily armed" by the Sudanese government and defenders are often equipped only with bows and arrows, the 61-year-old actress said.

The U.N. Security Council has authorized 17,000 peacekeepers and 3,000 police for Darfur but the Sudanese government has been reluctant to accept them.

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