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KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese aid agencies must be helped to fill in the huge gaps left in Darfur's aid operation by the expulsion of 13 humanitarian organisations last year, Oxfam America said on Thursday.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in March last year for war crimes in Darfur. He responded by expelling the major aid agencies from Darfur, leaving a hole in the world's largest humanitarian operation.

Oxfam America was one of the small agencies left in Sudan which had to step up its work to fill the gap, but country director El Fateh Osman Adam said there was still much to do.

"We worked hard to address the immediate life-saving issues, provide water, sanitation," he told Reuters in an interview.

"If it was not provided we may have seen humanitarian catastrophe," he said. "But there are gaps in a number of areas, livelihood... protection... and nobody is talking about education."

In 2010 the agency's annual budget will reach $6 million, a massive jump from the 2008/09 funds of $1.5 million.

Sister agency Oxfam GB was one of the largest and oldest agencies working in Sudan before being expelled last year.

The crisis in Darfur, where mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of neglecting their region, prompted the world's largest aid effort.