The number of people in the world struck by natural disasters has more than doubled over the last decade and economic losses have more than trebled, a top United Nations official told his counterparts in other UN agencies on Monday. Jan Egeland, under-secretary-general of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told a committee of the UN General Assembly considering sustainable development that in 2003 alone, disasters had affected more than 254 million people. Locusts in Africa and tropical cyclones and floods in the Caribbean and Asia have already caused "immense losses" in 2004, he said.