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Google Earth and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum announced a joint effort to highlight conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Google, Holocaust Museum Map 'Crisis in Darfur'

Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have lost their lives since the Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003. Systematic human rights abuses have occurred, including killing, torture, rape, looting and destroying of property by all parties involved in the conflict, but primarily by the Sudanese government and government-backed Janjawid militia. -- Amnesty International, on human rights concerns in Sudan

An online mapping initiative backed by the Holocaust Museum and empowered by Google Earth will bring the Darfur crisis into focus. Today a Global Awareness layer containing photographs, data and eyewitness testimony about Darfur became available in Google Earth.

Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative. Google and the Museum said in a statement that will over time the Initiative will include information on potential genocides, allowing citizens, governments and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.

The imagery available to Google Earth's 200 million users will show the devastation in Darfur first-hand. Remnants of more than 100,000 homes, schools, mosques and other structures destroyed by the Janjawid militia and Sudanese forces will be visible.

"Crisis in Darfur will enable Google Earth users to visualize and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before and join the Museum’s efforts in responding to this continuing international catastrophe," said Elliot Schrage, Google Vice President, Global Communications and Public Affairs.

Google said imagery and content for the project will come from various sources: the U.S. State Department, non-governmental organizations, the United Nations, individual photographers, and the Museum.

A similar project, focused on Holocaust history, launched at the