Some 2,000 Egyptian riot police stormed a camp of Sudanese refugees on Friday, sparking clashes that left at least 20 Sudanese dead and more than 100 police and others injured, officials and witnesses said.
A riot policeman stands in front of an injured Sudanese man after a protest was broken up in Cairo
Witnesses said police beat those in the camp with truncheons after officials had failed to persuade them to board buses to move them from an affluent part of Cairo to another site.
The Interior Ministry said the Sudanese died in a stampede at the camp, where 3,500 Sudanese live in squalid conditions. 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, who fired water cannon to try to disperse them, witnesses said.
Police swept into the camp to break up a three-month sit-in to demand that they be moved to another country.
An Interior Ministry source said 20 protesters died and a refugee spokesman said the toll could be higher. The Health Ministry said 50 Sudanese were injured. The figures could not immediately be confirmed.
Egyptian television showed footage of several injured policemen in a hospital.
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.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (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.
The UNHCR called the deaths a tragedy but a Sudanese official said security forces were entitled to end the sit-in at the camp.
"There is no justification for such violence and loss of life," High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
A UNHCR spokesman said the agency had urged Egyptian authorities to deal with the situation peacefully. Egyptian police had not told UNHCR officials they would try to move the protesters today, a spokesman said.