NIAMEY, Oct 30 (Reuters) - French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) will leave Niger after failing to persuade the government to allow it to restart work in the Sahel country, it said on Thursday.

Niger's health authorities have accused MSF of exaggerating the numbers of under-nourished children in need of aid in the southern region of Maradi, and of not working with the government.

"I regret to announce that after seven years of work, MSF has been forced to leave Niger," said Christophe Fournier, president of the international board of MSF, in a news conference broadcast on local radio channels.

Since a 2005 humanitarian crisis in the largely desert country, which left 3.6 million people short of food and made headlines around the world with images of starving children, Niger's government has reacted angrily to any reports suggesting its population are going hungry or at risk of famine.

MSF has said that since a government order in July suspending its activities in and around Maradi, an estimated 8,000 severely malnourished children had been deprived of treatment at its feeding centres.

Only days ago, the charity appealed to the government of Niger to allow it to resume treatment of thousands of malnourished children in the Maradi area. [ID:nLL401825]

"On October 21, in Niamey, in the face of the government's refusal to authorise MSF to resume its activities, MSF called on the President of the Republic to arbitrate. We have received only silence in response. The French section of MSF has thus chosen to take formal note of the government's position that 'MSF should leave,'" the charity said in a statement.

There was no immediate reaction from the Niger government. (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalatchi; Writing by Daniel Magnowski; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Sami Aboudi)

AlertNet news is provided by