Egyptian riot police on Friday stormed a protest camp in Cairo set up by thousands of Sudanese refugees, sparking clashes that left 23 Sudanese dead, officials and witnesses said.

Witnesses said police beat the refugees with truncheons and used water cannon to drive them from the squalid camp in a small park in an affluent part of the Egyptian capital, where they had been staging a protest for three months.

About 4,000 police ringed the site, near the offices of the UN refugee agency, where the Sudanese were protesting what they said was poor treatment since they fled Sudan's lengthy civil war and were demanding they be sent to another country.

Some 2,000 police swept into the camp of makeshift tents housing about 3,500 men, women and children after officials failed to persuade them to board buses to move to another site.

The Interior Ministry said the Sudanese died in a stampede at the camp. It said 75 police officers were injured.

Pools of blood were visible on the pavement as men in the camp fought back with sticks and hurled bottles at the police, witnesses said.

A mortuary official said 23 people had died and the Health Ministry said 50 Sudanese were injured. The figures could not immediately be confirmed.

Egyptian television showed several injured policemen in a hospital and Reuters witnesses said there were about six unconscious Sudanese, some of them children, on the ground.

A doctor who examined a girl aged about four who was brought to him after being found unconscious said: "She's dead."

Ending sit-in

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called the deaths a tragedy and a UNHCR spokesman said the agency had urged Egyptian authorities to deal with the situation peacefully.

The UNHCR has said it is prepared to help Sudanese in Egypt but cannot arrange for all of them to resettle in another country because many are looking for a better life and are not refugees fleeing a conflict.

"There is no justification for such violence and loss of life," High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

But a Sudanese official said security forces were entitled to end the sit-in at the improvised camp.
 
"The Egyptian government was within its rights to re-establish its control," said Sudanese presidential adviser Mahjoub Fadl in comments carried by Egypt's official Middle East News Agency (MENA).

The protesters said they wanted the UNHCR to arrange for them to be flown out of Egypt. Many wanted to be sent to the United States or the Europe.

"Most Sudanese refugees have been subjected to violence in Egypt. We don't want to be here any more," said one Sudanese protester who gave his name as Wilson.

Hundreds of Sudanese picked up by the police were being held in two camps run by the security forces, who were checking their identities, representatives from among the protesters said.

Sudan's two-decade north-south civil war made 4 million people homeless and a separate conflict in the western Darfur region has produced a further 2 million refugees.

A January peace agreement ended the north-south civil war but many Sudanese say it is not safe to return home as the deal is fragile.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies December 31, 2005)