"We're exceeding many of the goals we set ourselves two months ago. However the goalpost has been put miles ahead of us because so many more people have been affected," said Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator.
"We thought we would need to feed a million people by now - we have to feed two million," he told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
An estimated 70,000 people have died and around 1.4 million have been displaced in Darfur after what UN officials have called a scorched-earth campaign of ethnic cleansing against the region's black African population.
The UN Security Council and secretary-general Kofi Annan have been pressing the Arab-led Khartoum government to disarm the Arab militias behind the bloodshed and to make it easier for humanitarian workers to reach the region's needy.
But Mr Egeland said security for aid workers in the area was now worse than earlier in the year, when the Darfur crisis first came into the international spotlight.
"We feel very alone in Darfur at the moment," Mr Egeland said.
"The security situation is deteriorating for us. Colleagues have been killed, colleagues have been harassed, colleagues have been kidnapped."
He stressed the importance of quickly deploying the promised troops and monitors from the African Union, who have been held up by a lack of funding from international donors.
Earlier on Thursday, the African Union (AU) announced it would multiply its truce force in Darfur sevenfold, an announcement welcomed by UN chief Annan.
"This AU mission is crucial to enhancing security for the civilian population and for the effective provision of much-needed humanitarian assistance," Annan's spokesman said in a statement.
"In the light of the growing insecurity in Darfur, the secretary general urges the AU to deploy this force speedily," the statement said.
By In Solidarity 22 October 04
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