Egypt is preparing to deport 654 Sudanese refugees who were violently evicted from a protest camp in a Cairo park last week.
The refugees will be taken to Sudan by ship on Thursday because "they were either found to be illegal immigrants or refugees who had violated security conditions," spokeswoman Fatma el-Zahraa Etman told The Associated Press news agency.
The migrants were detained early last Friday after squads of riot police evicted more than 1,000 Sudanese migrants from a small park where they had camped for three months to protest what they saw as a failure by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to help resettle them.
After negotiations with their leaders, police with water cannons and truncheons stormed the park. The Interior Ministry said 12 protesters were killed, but security officials said 25 died, and a protest leader put the toll at 26.
At least 74 policemen were wounded in the operation, which was condemned by local and international human rights groups.
Earlier Tuesday, UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort said the deaths were "very sad," but nobody was to blame.
"We urged the police to deal with the situation in a peaceful manner," van Genderen Stort said.
When told of the deportation plan, she expressed surprise and said: "We appealed to the Egyptian authorities that they would not deport those in the security centers."
"We were given assurances they would not" deport them "as of this point in time' she said.
In explaining the decision to evict the Sudanese from the park, the government issued statements blaming them for refusing orders to leave and said the UNHCR had asked security officials to bring the protest to an end.
AP