At least 2,000 people have died and 250,000 have fled their homes following violence in southern Sudan this year, worsening a humanitarian crisis in a region seeking its independence, officials from a medical aid group said yesterday.

Officials from Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said this year's violence is the worst since the signing of a 2005 peace deal between south Sudan and the north, an agreement that ended two decades of civil war.

The group's operations director in Sudan, Stephan Goetghebuer, said the 2009 killings are different from past violence in the south that was linked to land clashes and cattle rustling. This year, villages have been attacked, and raiders have targeted and killed women and children, he said.

The group said that 87 percent of the people it treated this year were victims of gunshot wounds, but that the number of people killed in the violence is three times higher than the number of wounded.

"There are very few survivors. People are killed massively," Goetghebuer said.

Goetghebuer said aid group officials don't yet understand the underlying reasons for the attacks. MSF has been working in Sudan for 30 years.

Sudan could face huge political upheaval next year that risks re-igniting the country's civil war as the south prepares to vote for independence in early 2011.

An MSF report on the humanitarian crisis in south Sudan released yesterday said there were warning signs before some of this year's attacks, but neither the government of southern Sudan nor the U.N. mission in Sudan protected the communities.

Karla Bil, MSF's medical coordinator in Sudan, said at least 2,000 people have died in violence this year. Shelagh Woods, MSF's deputy head of mission for Sudan, said the recent violence was exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis, which aid agencies based in south Sudan have not adequately responded to.