Sudanese killed in demonstrations

CAIRO, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Twenty Sudanese migrants died Friday in clashes with Cairo riot police who forcefully dismantled their makeshift refuge outside a U.N. office.

It happened when thousands of Egyptian police dispersed a huge sit-in outside the U.N. refugee agency by the Sudanese that has been going on since September.

The refugees who fled from Sudan in the course of the 21 years of civil war in their country were demanding that the UNHCR, the High Commission for Refugees, move them out of Egypt to another country where conditions were better, media reports said.

But a peace agreement ended the conflict a year ago, and the agency's efforts were limited to political refugees. Most of the 4,000 or so demonstrators were economic migrants. A separate war in the western region of Darfur has displaced 2 million people.

The demonstrators died when police surrounded the area of tents and makeshift shelters and forced people onto buses. "There was a stampede that left 30 of the protesters injured, most of them elderly and young and they were immediately taken to the hospital where 10 of them died," the Egyptian interior ministry said. The ministry later raised the number of dead to 20.

The government said three people had recently died of infectious disease in the sit-in area centered on a small public garden, including a four-year-old child.