KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) – Trucks carrying food and equipment set out from the Sudanese capital for the violence-torn region Darfur on Friday, the start of a major aid push by the international Red Cross.

The effort is the International Committee of the Red Cross’ biggest operation in the world, said spokeswoman Julia Bassam. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and some 1.4 million people forced from their homes in the western region of Sudan.

As the first eight trucks left Khartoum on Friday, more trucks and other vehicles were flown in from Geneva. From now on, Bassam said, convoys will be leaving from Red Cross warehouses every two days. Meanwhile, a giant cargo plane was making six trips from Geneva to ferry in nearly 800 tons of supplies and equipment, ranging from trucks to medicine.

The operation began as the Aug. 30 deadline approached for Sudan to comply with a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding it improve the humanitarian and security situation in its western Darfur region, which the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Sudanese government denies charges it has backed ethnic Arab militias accused of horrific attacks on ethnic African civilians in Darfur and says it wants to work with the international community to restore calm there.

Bassam said the Red Cross was struck by the ease with which it was able to get government cooperation for the aid flights and convoys. U.N. officials in recent days have offered similar assessments; aid agencies had complained that the government prevented them from getting aid to Darfur.

“There certainly has been a marked improvement over the last month,” Bassam told The Associated Press. “It looks like the international pressure so far has brought about this change.”

Still, she said, if hurdles had been cleared earlier, the convoys might have been able to set out before the rainy season. Rains that began in July have filled valleys with water and turned desert tracks into muddy traps, particularly in West Darfur, one of the most inaccessible areas in the vast region.

The trucks that left Khartoum Friday were expected to take two weeks to reach the West Darfur capital, Bassam said.

On Thursday, Ibrahim Hamid, Sudan’s minister for humanitarian affairs, told the AP his government has made “serious progress” in improving security and humanitarian relief in Darfur.

Also Thursday, U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator Erick De Mul told the AP that communication with the central government had improved. De Mul and two U.N. special representatives fanned out across Darfur to assess the government’s compliance with U.N. demands.

A resolution adopted by the U.N. Security Council on July 30 gave the government 30 days to improve the situation in Darfur or face possible punitive measures. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to deliver a written report on Sudan’s compliance by Aug. 30, and Pronk will deliver his assessment to the Security Council on Sept. 2.

Following years of years of clashes between Darfur’s ethnic Arab herders and ethnic African farmers over scarce resources, African rebels rose against the government in February 2003. International rights groups have accused the government of arming the Arab militias known as Janjaweed to crush the revolt – an accusation it denies, although last week the United Nations said Khartoum had acknowledged it has control over some Janjaweed.

AP-ES-08-27-04 0940EDT