It wasn’t much more than a speck. A tiny, white fleck in the wide blue sky above us. Our 4×4 lurched to a halt as Yahia, the driver, peered through the 10 inches of windscreen scraped clean of the mud that camouflaged the rest of the vehicle. Then we were off again, lurching over the rutted earth of North Darfur in a straight line for the nearest cover: nothing more than a spindly thorn tree.

We parked up with the car barely hidden by the branches and the three rebels and I sat down in the dust, shaded by other trees. 

The Antonovs were out hunting. After guerrillas with the Justice and Equality Movement seized the town of Kornoi the government planes were out on the hunt every morning and evening. We had been spotted. Maybe it was a glint from the RPG launcher hanging from the wingmirror or the plume of dust that we kicked up pelting helter-skelter through the desert. Either way the Antonov high above was turning in tighter and tighter circles overhead.

Read the full blog post on Rob’s blog.

The use of these figures in the media is inconsistent; both individual journalists and newspapers themselves vary in the numbers they use. For example, a journalist for Britain’s Times newspaper used both 200,000 and 300,000 in articles published in February and March 2009 respectively, having previously used 300,000 for most of the previous year’s reporting.

The most irritating thing, is that he is completely right. I’ve dithered. Having spent a bit of time trying to work out the best number, I then screwed it up.

In confusing situations, where stats differ, the safest thing is to use a trusted authority. In this case, the United Nations uses a death toll of 300,000. This is what I was using for most of last year after Sir John Holmes first used the figure.

Only it became increasingly apparent that this number was the result of sticking a finger in the air and adding a few more deaths to the last figure. Asking his officials for details of the calculation just brought a rather confused series of knowing smiles.

Sir John reckoned his number was a reasonable extrapolation from a 2006 figure of 200,000 deaths. Yet we know the death toll of the past year, for example, is way, way less that the worst slaughter of 2003/2004. Last year, deaths from violence were around about 1600. Or not much more than 100 or so a month. We also know that the incredible efforts of the humanitarian agencies had brought down mortality indicators inside the camps (which could now be changing).

Read the rest of this post on Rob’s blog.