* "Bandits" demand ransom for aid workers

* Hostages said to be in good health

By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM, July 9 (Reuters) - Armed "bandits" have demanded a ransom for the release of two female aid workers kidnapped in Sudan's Darfur region and are negotiating with government officials, a minister said on Thursday.

One of the abducted women, Sharon Commins, 32, from Ireland, has managed to phone officials in Dublin and North Darfur, and has confirmed she and her Ugandan colleague are in good health, said state minister for humanitarian affairs Abdel Baqi al-Jailani.

It was the first confirmation that officials are negotiating with the armed men who seized the workers for Irish aid group GOAL from their compound in the north Darfur town of Kutum on Friday -- the third kidnapping of foreigners in the remote western region in four months.

"They want money and negotiations are ongoing," al-Jailani told Reuters. "We now know the names of the people and their tribes.

"This is nothing to do with politics. This is nothing to do with the (Darfur) rebels. It appears that they are some bandits. We hope we will have some good news in a few days time."

GOAL staff in Sudan, and a team of Irish negotiators in Khartoum and north Darfur capital El Fasher, have declined to comment on efforts to free the women.

The aid group, which named the second aid worker as Hilda Kawuki, 42, from Uganda, has suspended operations in the area.

Aid workers and U.N. agencies have been caught up in an increasingly chaotic six-year conflict in Darfur.

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against Sudan's government in 2003, accusing it of neglecting the region, and Khartoum responded by mobilising troops and mostly Arab militias to crush the uprising.

Since then, the fighting has descended into a free-for-all, complicated by the splintering of rebel groups, armed bandit attacks and clashes between rival tribes over grazing rights and other traditional disputes.

Estimates of the resulting death toll range from 10,000, according to Khartoum, to 300,000, according to U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes.

Aid workers have faced regular car-jackings, break-ins and harassment in the region bordering Chad, but the kidnapping of foreigners was almost unheard of before this year.

A group, reportedly calling itself the Eagles of Bashir, seized staff from the Belgian arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres in North Darfur in March.

Government officials from North Darfur said the group was protesting against the International Criminal Court's decision that same month to issue an arrest warrant against Sudan's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir to face charges of masterminding atrocities in Darfur.

Those workers were later released unharmed, as were two staff members from France's Aide Medicale Internationale, abducted in south Darfur in April.

A branch of Darfur's insurgent Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) has accused militias backed by Sudan's government of carrying out the most recent kidnapping, in a bid to intimidate aid agencies. Khartoum has dismissed the allegation. (Editing by Giles Elgood)

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