Sudan: The Passion of the Present

Facing Servitude, Ethiopian Girls Run for a Better Life

A recent feature by Emily Wax of the "Washington Post"...

Virtually the only way for Tesdale Mesele, 13, to avoid soon being married into a life of housework and childbearing was to run.

So that's what the spunky girl with matchstick legs and a ponytail did. She ran along the rutted dirt roads of the Ethiopian highlands, barefoot or in torn sneakers, trying to improve her endurance. She ran up the wide, cracked steps to Meskel Square in the capital, while goats wandered by and clouds of pollution turned the air charcoal gray.

And once she felt she was fast enough, Tesdale ran around the country's only track, a rough ring of patched and potholed rubber inside Addis Ababa Stadium, hoping to be spotted by a running club and win a tiny sponsorship known as "calorie money."

Professional running in Ethiopia was long dominated by men, and the country has produced some of the world's best male distance runners. The legendary Haile Gebrselassie, 33, has broken 17 world records and won two Olympic gold medals. But in the last decade, determined female runners like Meseret Defar, 22, have also begun winning Olympic medals, world championship races and marathons. Today, according to an Ethiopian sports magazine, seven of the 10 top-earning athletes in Ethiopia are women.

Inspired by these new national heroines, Tesdale and thousands of other girls have left their villages and come to the capital, living with relatives in hardscrabble neighborhoods, training on their own and dreaming of being able to compete.

But there are other, more practical reasons for girls to become fit and fast.

"I run so the boys know I'm strong and don't harass me," said Tesdale, panting from her afternoon run from school to home in a ragged sweatshirt and sneakers. "I also run because I want to give priority to my schooling. If I'm a good runner, the school will want me to stay and not be home washing laundry and preparing injera," the spongy bread that is the staple of the Ethiopian diet.

Tesdale lives in a mud-walled compound with three other girls whose older sisters have brought them here from family farms to train as runners. But their real ambition is simply to stay in school.

In Ethiopia, getting an education is a true marathon: Girls' enrollment is among the lowest in the world, and women and girls are more likely to die in childbirth than reach sixth grade, according to UNICEF.

"I have so many hopes for her," said Tesdale's sister, Alamas, 18. "When I was her age, my parents wanted me to marry an old man of 30. They were so angry when I ran away to the city. They didn't speak to me for years. But now, with my sister's dream of running, she has value to them. She has respect. She doesn't have to have babies early, because that would disturb her running. They realize it was right for me to come, and now for her, too."

In Ethiopia, girls as young as 12 can be sold as brides by parents desperate for dowry payments.

The country has Africa's highest rate of vaginal fistulas, a tearing of the vagina that often afflicts adolescents during childbirth and requires painful reconstructive surgery.

Ethiopia, an impoverished country of 73 million, also has one of the largest caseloads of AIDS in the world, forcing many girls to quit school and care for a sick or widowed relative. Since few homes have running water or electricity, cooking and cleaning take most of day.

There are also cultural taboos against girls walking long distances through desolate bush to school. Parents fear rape and abduction, which are often carried out as a way to force a girl into marriage.

"Teenage girls in Africa are the most vulnerable population in the world," said Alessandro Conticini, who heads the child protection and HIV/AIDS sections at the UNICEF office here. "They do more work than their brothers. They are far more vulnerable to dropping out and being forced into domestic labor . . . forced marriages, prostitution."

Conticini said conditions in Ethiopia were slowly improving, "but ultimately, girls need a good reason to sway parents that they should be allowed to go to school and delay work and marriage."

So far, running has proved a powerful incentive. Even in the most traditional rural enclaves, parents see the benefit in allowing girls to train, which means they must attend school because coaches pick race contestants.

Children here are expected to support parents in their old age, and girls who run are often economically successful because they lead disciplined lives, said ElShadai Negash, editor of Endurance, a sports magazine in Addis Ababa.

"For a girl, being able to run is a real statement of freedom that actually turns into power," Negash said. "Female runners are idols in part because of their financial success. If that girl can become a respectable earner, then why not delay marriage? She's seen as an investment, after all."

Many Ethiopian girls develop strength at an early age from doing hours of chores, walking three or four miles a day to fetch water and attend school, and carrying loads of firewood on their heads.

While boys spend time with their fathers, running errands or hanging out, girls are responsible for helping their mothers with demanding chores, from mashing fruit for juice to cleaning carpets by hand.

Meseret Defar, who won an Olympic gold medal in 2004 in the 5,000 meters and a silver in the 2005 world championships, said she spent her childhood carrying wood so heavy that she developed strong back muscles by age 10.

"I would also carry clay pots filled with water for two miles every day," Defar recounted at a cafe here. "I used to cry because all I wanted to do was train and run, but I had to do household chores."

Though barely five feet tall, she proved to be an astonishingly fast runner, and eventually got the attention of her father and coaches at school. Even then, however, she had to secretly borrow her brothers' sneakers.

"I always ran barefoot," she said, glancing down at the brand-name sneakers she is now paid to wear. "Back then, girls were not bought real sneakers since they were expensive. So I started taking my brothers' shoes for training, getting up really early and then sneaking them back so they could wear them for school."

Defar has earned so much money from running that she paid for both of her brothers to go to school; one is studying computers and the other video production.

Perhaps most important, being a successful runner gave her more control over her life. She was able to delay childbirth and choose the man she married, a handsome soccer player who is her age and has similar interests.

Recently Defar spoke to young mothers hospitalized with vaginal fistulas. She said she encouraged them to help their own daughters stay in school, develop their talents, delay marriage and find value in their lives. In the compound where Tesdale lives, the girls idolize Defar and have hung posters of her on the walls.

"Running gives girls a lot of options and makes our bodies our own," Defar said. "And even if everyone doesn't make it, training opens up ideas to teach, to be a coach, to do anything you try hard at."

Gebrselassie, the male running star, said he had been speaking at girls' schools and running clubs, too, and donating shoes for their training.

"It's so fantastic that more girls are running in Ethiopia," he said in a telephone interview here this week. "I want to support our girl athletes not just materially but morally. . . . Girls make wonderful runners. I think it sends a fantastic message that girls can do anything the boys do."

On a recent morning, Tesdale and her best friend, Sercalem Tesefay, 14, woke at 5:30 and jogged for an hour to reach Meskel Square.

Warming up at eight minutes a mile, they sped past women stooped under clusters of firewood and men behind the wheels of taxis snarled in traffic.

At Meskel Square, girls and boys were sprinting up the steps as recruiters watched. Neither Tesdale nor Sercalem has signed up with a running group, but they both said they hoped to improve their times by next year.

By 8 a.m. the two friends were off to elementary school, another half-hour run away. After classes ended at 1 p.m., they ran home, fed the goats, walked another mile to collect water and finally sat down in their compound for a traditional coffee ceremony.

Over doll-size cups of strong coffee, the girls' older sisters said they were happy the pair had become modern girls: students and athletes with braids in their hair and paint on their nails.

"There is scarcity of everything in the countryside. If we stay, we aren't sure if our lives will be what we want," said Sercalem's sister, Muluwork, 20, a part-time construction worker. Their "obvious" fate, she said, would be "early marriage and childbirth, along with many years of chores."

Sercalem smiled and turned to Muluwork.

"When I dream," she said, "I see myself running so fast that I can bring us up from our living standards and buy all the girls of Ethiopia sneakers."

Egypt: Investigate Police for Sudanese Deaths

A new HRW press release, reprinted on both the "Peace Journalism" site and Sudan Tribune...

President Husni Mubarak should urgently appoint an independent commission to investigate the use of force by police against Sudanese migrants demonstrating in a makeshift camp in Mohandiseen, Cairo, Human Rights Watch said today [Friday]. At least 20 persons reportedly died.

“The high loss of life suggests the police acted with extreme brutality,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “A police force acting responsibly would not have allowed such a tragedy to occur.”

According to media accounts, a police force of nearly 4,000 officers surrounded the encampment of Sudanese refugees and migrants, fired water cannons into the crowd, and then entered in force, beating persons indiscriminately. The Egyptian Interior Ministry attributed the fatalities to “a stampede,” and said in a statement that “the migrants’ leaders resorted to incitement and attacks against the police.” Other reports said some of the protesters fought police with sticks and bottles. The dead reportedly included a girl who appeared to be about three or four years old.

The Sudanese migrants have been protesting outside the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since September 29 seeking to be relocated to other countries. The evident planning of the police operation to clear the park in Mohandiseen suggested that the police acted on the basis of a high-level policy decision. Human Rights Watch called for an investigation that looked at all levels of the police command, including the role of Interior Minister Habib al-`Adli.

The use of force by state security forces is governed by international standards. The U.N. Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials states that "law enforcement officials may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty." The U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms provide that law enforcement officials “shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force” and may use force “only if other means remain ineffective.” When the use of force is unavoidable, law enforcement officials must “exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence.”

“The blood is still on the sidewalks, and already the government is blaming the Sudanese refugees and migrants,” said Stork. “Given Egypt’s terrible record of police brutality, an independent investigation is absolutely necessary to assess responsibility and punish those responsible.”

Sudanese refugees killed as Egyptian police storm protest camp in Cairo park / Egyptian Police Kill at Least 23 Unarmed Sudanese Migrants / Egypt accused of migrant massacre

Seven new, original newspaper stories that add detail to the stories from earlier today (updated originally to add the one from the "Guardian"; updated further on Saturday to add the ones from the "Washington Post" and the "Los Angeles Times"; updated still further early Sunday to add the one from the "Financial Times"):

From the UK's "Independent"...

At least 20 Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers, including three children, have been killed and dozens injured after authorities cleared a protest camp in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

Security police used water cannons and beat squatters with heavy batons after about 2,500 Sudanese refused to leave the city park they have been occupying for the past three months in protest at their treatment by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

One Sudanese refugee told The Independent that police also used tear gas during the clashes.

According to Sudanese witnesses, up to 4,500 central security police surrounded the small park late on Thursday night. After negotiations failed, the police turned water cannons on to the men, woman and children who had been living in squalid conditions inside in the camp since September. Shortly before dawn, police used tear gas before charging the camp, destroying tents and beating the protesters in an attack which lasted half an hour.

"People were crying and screaming, children were running, old people were falling to the ground," said Hussein Sheikh Eddin, 30, a refugee from Sudan's Darfur region who lived in the camp. "It was very, very strong violence by the police. The Sudanese put up no defence."

Mr Eddin said he saw women and children being beaten. He believed that "between 10 and 30" Sudanese, including children, had been killed.

The Egyptian government had earlier placed the number of dead at 10 and claimed that the Sudanese deaths were caused by a stampede.

The forced clearance was the final act of a long-running saga that has tested the patience of the Egyptian government and strained relations with the UNHCR. The Sudanese, who had fled from the south of the country and from the province of Darfur, set up the camp near the offices of the UNHCR after efforts to resettle them to other countries had stalled.

The situation reached a stalemate last month when it became apparent that no country was prepared to accept the Sudanese, many of whom had been granted refugee status. The UNHCR had earlier announced that it would no longer provide aid to those who had applied for but been refused refugee status.

UNHCR high commissioner Antonio Guterres said he was "deeply shocked and saddened" by the attack. "There is no justification for such violence and loss of life. This is a terrible tragedy and our condolences go to all the families of those who died and to the injured," he said.

A spokesman for Egypt's Interior Ministry said it had attempted to negotiate the peaceful removal of the Sudanese, but that they had not responded. "They had no legal right to stay in the park. They threw jars of water and wine over Egyptian police," he said.

The camp had become a blot on the neighbourhood of Mohandiseen, which is home to a number of diplomatic missions and Cairo's upper middle classes.

The refugees lived crammed together with no clean water and no lavatory facilities. By night they huddled under plastic sheeting, with suitcases marking their family groupings.

Sanitary conditions had deteriorated, with local residents complaining that the Sudanese were defecating and urinating in the streets. Since the camp was set up three people, including a child, have died.

As the Egyptians began to clear up the park, Mr Eddin said: "I am very, very afraid. I have nowhere to stay. I am afraid of what will happen to us now."

However, there was no sympathy from local residents. "They've all got Aids, they're filthy, they stink," Samir Mohammed said. "They should go back where they came from."

From the "New York Times"...

Egyptian riot police rushed into a crowd of unarmed Sudanese migrants early this morning [Friday], killing at least 23 people, including small children, after the group refused to leave a public park it had occupied for three months hoping to pressure United Nations officials to relocate them.

The police tried for hours to persuade thousands of men, women and children to leave the small square, hosing them with water canon, surrounding them with cordons of riot police, imploring the women and children to board buses, and repeatedly warning that they would be removed forcefully.

But the crowd was desperate, having moved with all their possessions, suitcases loaded with clothing and family photographs, jewelry and kitchen wares, into what amounted to a traffic island in a middle-class neighborhood. They hoped the authorities would declare them refugees and send them abroad. They had fled war-torn Sudan, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Cairo - across from where they camped out - told them that they were not eligible for refugee status or for relocation because it was safe for them to return home.

When the police charged, women and children tried to huddle together, and to hide under blankets as some men grabbed for anything - tree limbs, metal bars - struggling to fight back, witnesses said. The police hesitated, then rushed in with full force, trampling over people and dragging the Sudanese off to waiting buses, the witnesses said. Some people were trampled.

"They started hitting our heads with the sticks and dragging us," said Napoleon Robert Lado, a leader of the group, speaking on a cell phone from a police camp where he and others had been taken. "They dragged me when I was trying to help a woman who fainted to stand up. They dragged me and I was stepping over the old people and women and children. I was screaming and trying to step away, but could not."

By nightfall, Muhammad Khalaf, head of the area's emergency department, said there were 23 dead, 7 of them children, 8 elderly, and 7 more women. Human rights organizations said that others died after being taken to police camps and being denied immediate access to health care.

For Egypt, it was more bad news after a string of incidents that have attracted widespread condemnation of the government. Last week, a court sentenced a political opposition leader, Ayman Nour, to five years of hard labor after finding him guilty of forging petitions to create his political party - charges that were so widely viewed as politically motivated there was a strong rebuke from Washington and the European Union. Before that, state security forces killed more than a dozen people while trying to stop voters from casting ballots for opposition candidates during parliamentary elections.

UNHCR officials had washed their hands of the Sudanese refugees after the group balked at a deal that would have had them leave the park in return for help finding new homes in Egypt and for having all of their cases reviewed. The refugees refused. They wanted to leave, period. And so the matter was turned over to Egyptian authorities, which decided to turn it over to the security forces.

"This was an occupation we had to end," said a colonel who helped supervise the raid but asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to make any statements. "For five hours, we had been trying to negotiate with them to convince them to move to another place until the issue is solved, but they declined."

Most everyone involved with the crisis seemed shocked by the brutal outcome, even Egyptian officials, who by the standards of a country that barely tolerates public dissent felt they had bent over backwards to try to cajole the Sudanese into leaving the square. The authorities said they were not to blame for the outcome. UNHCR said it was not to blame for the outcome. They both laid the blame on the Sudanese for being stubborn, a charge many of the Sudanese accepted, saying who would not risk death for a chance at a better life.

"The only thing I can say is that the Egyptian authorities have been tolerating the sit-in strike for the past three months because, just like us, they wanted a peaceful solution," said Astrid Van Genderen Stort, a UNHCR spokeswoman in Cairo. "But at a certain point the situation became an issue of public disorder. There were serious health threats."

The warnings began around 9 p.m., when the police surrounded the camp, hundreds, perhaps thousands, dressed in black uniforms with helmets, and plastic shields and truncheons. They shouted through bullhorns, telling the protesters to climb aboard 16 buses. They refused, even as the police began to march in place, pounding their boots into the ground. By 3:30 a.m., the police opened fire with water [cannons], soaking the people, who huddled in the cold night between blankets and plastic tarps, anything they could find. They began to pray, and hold hands, and scream as the police rushed in.

"I was very scared," said Michael Edward, 32, also from a cell phone after being taken by the police. "I was screaming and looking for my wife. It is unfortunate that they attacked people and beat us brutally. What kind of crime did we commit? Who treats refugees like that?"

The showdown began in late September, when migrants, most from the southern part of the country, began to show up in the middle of one of Cairo's more upscale neighborhoods. Surrounded by banks, fast food shops and car dealerships, they kept arriving and soon created a small village. An estimated 3,000 people crowded into a space no larger than a basketball court. The neighbors complained bitterly as the stench of human existence began to permeate the area, and as people washed in the bathroom of a nearby mosque. Many of the people in the camp seemed sick, and over the days and months they were there, several died.

UNHCR tried to negotiate and recently reached a deal with people who were identified as leaders - but the group refused, because the deal did not call for relocation, and that was all they wanted. Life in Egypt, they said, was too hard, and returning to Sudan, out of the question. But the UNHCR said, simply, that's not how it works.

"The UNHCR has always appealed for peaceful means to end this situation but we have to remember that for the past three months, we have exhausted all efforts to find a peaceful solution to this problem," said Ms. Van Genderen Stort, the UNHCR spokeswoman. "We met so many times with the demonstrators, we discussed their demands, we offered what we could offer and we explained what we couldn't do. There was a lot of support from the Egyptian authorities."

Human rights groups, and the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood issued statements condemning the violence and the authorities for giving up on the people in the square, and sending the police in.

After being loaded onto the buses, the Sudanese were taken to three separate police camps, where their names were taken and by late Friday some said they were being released with no possessions and nowhere to go.

The square where they had lived for three months was awash in the debris of many lives. The ground was covered with wet socks, a large plastic bag of sugar, a spoon, a shoe, a wool sweater, a stripped tie, empty juice boxes, cooking margarine, an old pot cover, an empty baby bottle, an old Sudanese school ID belonging to Tout Denek from Khartoum, family pictures of a young Sudanese girl, maybe five, blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. Everything was being sprayed in disinfectant by state health workers, and then loaded by sanitation workers into hauling containers. Health workers said they found bags and bottles of human waste in the camp.

Some of the neighbors were happy to see the Sudanese gone.

"I swear to God you are heroes," a woman shouted to the police as she drove by in her car.

From the UK's "Telegraph"...

Egyptian authorities were accused yesterday [Friday] of a "savage massacre" after an overnight raid to clear Sudanese demonstrators from a camp in Cairo left at least 20 dead and scores wounded.

The victims included children and the elderly. They were killed in the early hours of yesterday as thousands of police officers dragged away hundreds of migrants from the makeshift camp where they had lived since September.

The Egyptian interior ministry said the dead were killed in a stampede after failing to heed police orders and that 23 officers were wounded in clashes with the protesters.

But witnesses said there was no stampede and that police severely beat the Sudanese migrants as they were forced on to waiting buses.

The migrants had been camping outside offices of the United Nations on a main Cairo street.

"The savage way the security forces intervened led to a real human massacre," the South Centre, an independent Sudanese human rights monitoring group, said.

It said nearly 1,300 Sudanese men, women and children were forcibly taken to sites outside Cairo.

The migrants began their protest at the end of September after the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) refused to grant them official refugee status. While violence in Sudan's western Darfur region has left tens of thousands dead, a peace deal was signed to end the country's two-decade civil war almost a year ago. The UN in Cairo says the deal means that most of those at the ramshackle camp are economic migrants rather than genuine asylum seekers.

But the protesters say it is not safe for them to return to Sudan and demand to be designated refugees and resettled in a third country where they would have better conditions than in Egypt.

Shortly after midnight yesterday police surrounded the camp and alternated negotiations with blasts from water cannon. Some protesters knelt in prayer as they were doused. At around 5am the police used truncheons to remove those who would not go willingly. Witnesses said police beat protesters as they were carried away.

In Geneva, Antonio Guterres, the UNHCR chief, said he was "deeply shocked and saddened by the events".

From the UK's "Guardian"...

At least 20 Sudanese migrants died when thousands of Egyptian riot police brutally evicted them from their protest camp in an affluent district of Cairo yesterday [Friday].

An estimated 2,000 Sudanese people had been camped for three months in Mustafa Mahmoud square, Mohandiseen - an upper middle class suburb where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has an office - protesting about conditions in Egypt and seeking to be resettled in another country.

The attack began shortly before dawn when riot police fired water [cannons] at the group. The authorities then negotiated with the protest leaders in between bursts of water [cannons]. At about 5am police swarmed into the camp from all directions.

A reporter for the Associated Press who witnessed police attacking the refugees with truncheons said that in many cases they continued to beat the protesters even as they were being dragged away.

The reporter also saw two adults and a young girl, apparently three or four years old, being carried away unconscious. A medical worker in an ambulance said the girl was dead.

One protester being dragged away by two policemen was clubbed with a tree branch about the size of a man's arm by a third officer.

Egypt's interior ministry blamed the violence on the protesters. "Attempts were made to persuade them to disperse, but to no avail," the ministry said in a statement. "The migrants' leaders resorted to incitement and attacks against the police."

Officials said 20 protesters died and a ministry statement said 50 more were injured, "mostly elderly and children". The statement said 75 police were also injured. According to the ministry, the casualties among protesters resulted from a stampede. The AP reporter saw no stampede but said the protesters could not flee because the camp was completely encircled by police.

"Protesters could be seen fighting back with long sticks that appeared to be supports for makeshift tents," the reporter wrote.

Officials at the South Centre, a Sudanese human rights monitoring group, said 1,280 protesters were put into buses and taken to three camps outside Cairo.

The migrants were thought to be a mixture of Muslims, Christians and animists, from various parts of Sudan. They are believed to have included recognised refugees, asylum seekers and possibly some economic migrants.

"We're very shocked and saddened by what's transpired," said a UNHCR spokeswoman in Geneva.

The protesters had been seeking resettlement in a third country "but that is not really in UNHCR's gift - it's dependent on a third country agreeing to take them", she said. "We tried to maintain a dialogue with the protesters and there were several mediation attempts.

"What they seem to be saying is that conditions for them are tough in Egypt, but they are not in danger of being sent back [to Sudan]. They can work in Egypt and have education."

Between two and five million Sudanese people are thought to have fled to Egypt - only to face racism in a country already suffering from poverty, high unemployment and inadequate social services. Photographs of Sudanese refugees who had allegedly disappeared or been killed in Egypt were displayed around the Cairo camp.

Three years ago Egyptian police rounded up hundreds of Africans in what, according to Human Rights Watch, was referred to on a police document as "Operation Track Down Blacks".

From the "Washington Post"...

A three-month standoff between Sudanese refugees and Egyptian authorities climaxed in bloodshed early Friday when club-wielding police invaded a refugee squatter camp, setting off a melee in which at least 20 and perhaps 26 Sudanese were killed.

Some refugees fought back, using tent poles as weapons. An Egyptian Interior Ministry statement, which acknowledged 12 deaths, said 74 police officers were wounded. Officials blamed the deaths on a stampede.

The refugees set up the camp in a park in September to press their demands for resettlement in a Western country. They refused to return to their unstable homeland despite a January peace deal that ended years of north-south civil war.

After the peace agreement, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees stopped registering Sudanese for political asylum. Protesters resisted police orders and appeals from the Sudanese Embassy to leave.

At about 1 a.m. Friday, about 3,000 helmeted riot police surrounded the park, which is located in the relatively affluent Mohandessin district on the west side of the Nile River. They fired water cannons at some of the 2,000 refugees gathered there. After trying to drag people one by one onto buses for about two hours, the police invaded.

As is common with riot police in Egypt, the stiff rows of officers soon turned into a throbbing mob of uncontrolled baton-swingers. Police pursued refugees to the buses and whacked them as they boarded, including women and children.

Boutrous Deng, a Sudanese protest leader, told the Associated Press that 26 Sudanese were killed -- 17 men, 2 women and 7 children. Hospital officials earlier put the figure at 23, according to the Reuters news agency. Security officials cited anonymously by the AP said there were 20 deaths.

By dawn, the park was cleared, and about 1,000 refugees were transported to police barracks outside the city limits, Interior Ministry officials said. Other Sudanese huddled in parks and on street corners elsewhere in the sprawling capital. Piles of luggage and clothing remained where the protest camp had stood.

Tension over refugee arrivals from the south is felt across North Africa. Sub-Saharan Africans, fleeing violence and hunger in their homelands, have flocked to countries along Africa's Mediterranean coast. Many then board boats to try to reach Spain or Italy.

The European Union has pressured North African governments to curb the migrant traffic to its shores. Compliance commonly ends in brutality. In Libya, which until recently permitted sub-Saharan Africans to enter without a visa, reports of refugees disappearing without a trace after arrest are common.

On Thursday, seven migrants fled Morocco by clambering over a razor-wire fence into Spain's North African enclave of Melilla. In September and October, hundreds of African migrants stormed Melilla and Ceuta, another Spanish possession in North Africa. In separate incidents, Moroccan and Spanish police shot at the crowds, killing 11.

The exact number of Sudanese in Egypt is not known, but estimates range from 200,000 to 2 million.

Egypt's Interior Ministry said police were responding to the needs of the UNHCR, which, according to a ministry statement, had received "threats to attack the commission offices and its members." The ministry also asserted that the refugees ignored a Sudanese Embassy deadline for them to abandon the park or face the consequences.

"Attempts had been made to convince them to disperse, but to no avail," the ministry statement said. "The Egyptian security forces were implementing the deadline imposed by the Sudanese Embassy. The migrants' leaders resorted to incitement and attacks against the police."

The UNHCR reported last week that it had reached a compromise with some protest leaders. The agency pledged to resume hearing some asylum cases and offered a one-time payment of up to $700 for housing expenses.

In Geneva, UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement: "I am deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic events early today in Cairo. There is no justification for such violence and loss of life."

The Sudanese government expressed understanding of the police action, with a spokesman saying the Egyptian government "was within its rights to reestablish its control."

From the "Los Angeles Times"...

Egyptian riot police armed with clubs and water cannons stormed a downtown square packed with Sudanese refugees before dawn Friday in an attack that a human rights group said left 23 people dead.

About 2,000 Sudanese had been living for months in a dilapidated tent city near the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, demanding to be resettled abroad. Their encampment was viewed by many residents as an eyesore in one of Cairo's upscale districts.

Thousands of Egyptian riot police massed around the square early Friday and tried to force the demonstrators onto waiting buses. When they refused to leave, police fired water cannons and beat them with clubs. The clashes dragged on for hours; television footage showed the Sudanese fighting back with tent poles and bottles.

Witnesses said at least one child, a young girl, was among the dead.

"They didn't have to go that far," said Fathy Zayed, 50, an Egyptian who said police beat the protesters mercilessly. "There were women and children there."

The Egyptian Interior Ministry put the death toll at 10, but the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said it counted 23 fatalities. In a six-page statement, the ministry said the deaths and injuries were caused by a stampede.

The confrontation "came after the UNHCR office in Cairo received warnings of possible assault on its headquarters and staff, which in turn asked the security to protect them and disperse the sit-in," the statement said.

A UNHCR spokeswoman told Reuters news agency that the organization had no warning that the police would raid the tent city Friday morning.

The United Nations agency said in a statement that it had tried to resolve the dispute since the protest began in September. "Throughout this period, UNHCR maintained a constant dialogue and several mediation efforts, always emphasizing that such situations needed to be resolved peacefully," it said.

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

Once the violence subsided, the surviving protesters were put on buses and driven to military camps around Cairo, where their refugee status will be determined, officers at the scene said.

All that remained at the square as evidence of their sit-in were heaps of blankets, still damp from the blasts of water. Family photos were strewn among children's sandals and empty milk tins. Scattered English-language tutorial kits spoke of their hopes for better lives.

"There were a lot of dead bodies," said an ambulance driver from a nearby hospital, called by police to remove the bodies. "I know they said there were 10, but there were a lot." The ambulance driver declined to give his name.

At Embaba General Hospital, where some bodies were taken, workers with a humanitarian agency tried to get more details on the status of the injured and demanded information on the whereabouts of the dead protesters' remains. They could confirm only that three bodies were at Embaba. They had already been denied access to three hospitals around Cairo, they said.

Sudanese asylum seekers have trickled into neighboring Egypt for years to escape civil war. Upon arrival, they are expected to register with the UNHCR to be recognized as asylum seekers and receive an interview date for determining refugee status.

But the UNHCR stopped hearing the cases after a peace deal ending Sudan's civil war was signed in January.

It was this legal limbo, along with the lack of medical care, work permits and education they faced in Egypt, that drove the Sudanese to begin the protest. Crammed together in the tight space, they had only blankets to protect them from the winter chill. They survived by picking up jobs where they could. Many of the men worked in construction.

As the months passed, many residents and shopkeepers in the area grew resentful of their presence. Witnesses said that Egyptians looked on in approval Friday as police beat the Sudanese.

"They have been in this square for months, drinking alcohol and conducting their marital relations for all to see," said Hassan Ahmed, 43, a shopkeeper.

"They were drinking alcohol, getting drunk, and all this in front of the mosque," Noha Mohammed, a 20-year-old student, said as she came out of a restaurant near the square. "I don't understand the problem. Why don't they just go back to Sudan?"

Barbara Harrell-Bond, chairwoman of the Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance project and professor of forced-migration studies at the American University in Cairo, argued that the standoff could have been avoided.

"UNHCR's first words to us were, 'These people are of no concern to us,' " Harrell-Bond said. "If UNHCR hadn't come out with such provocative statements, heels wouldn't have been dug [in] so far."

But Harrell-Bond, who works closely with the Sudanese refugees, said she had advised them against their protest.

"The bottom line is all of them want to be resettled and sent out of Egypt, and they have good reasons," she said. But she said they should have drawn attention to the discrimination they faced and tried to gain access to services.

The UNHCR's efforts to resolve the situation "simply came too late," she said.

From the "Financial Times"...

At least 20 Sudanese refugees were killed and 50 injured yesterday [Friday] as Egyptian police forced an end to a three-month sit-in outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Cairo office.

Since late September, 2,000 refugees from southern Sudan and the western province of Darfur had been camped in squalid conditions outside UNHCR offices in an affluent Cairo neighbourhood. They were demanding full refugee status and relocation from Egypt, where they complain of poor treatment and racial discrimination.

Witnesses said police, after attempting negotiations, sprayed the protesters with water [cannons] before moving in with truncheons to force them on to buses.

One witness who followed the buses after watching events from a nearby building, said some of the refugees had been taken to a state security camp in the desert outside Cairo. "We could hear children screaming, and we saw women being dragged along the ground by their hair, and men being beaten all the way on to the buses," she said.

Egyptian human rights activists were planning a demonstration at the same spot today.

The refugees' protest has highlighted the plight of an estimated 2 [million]-3 [million] Sudanese living in Egypt. Those among them who are registered with the UNHCR are entitled to basic healthcare and protection, and in theory are able to work. But Egypt struggles to tackle its own social problems, and many Sudanese who arrive from neighbouring Sudan dream of moving on.

Egyptian authorities blamed the protesters for attacking police with bottles and sticks.

In a statement, the Interior Ministry said 20 Sudanese were killed and 75 policemen injured in the ensuing clash.

Several witnesses said children were among the dead.

Astrid Van Genderen Stort of the UNHCR in Cairo said the agency had not been informed of police plans and said it had urged the authorities to use peaceful means should they choose to end the protest.

She said the UNHCR continued to register refugees from southern Sudan on a collective basis, giving them access to six-month renewable visas.

However, it had stopped "individual status determination" for southern Sudanese since a peace agreement last year between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army of Southern Sudan offered hope of an end to 21 years of civil war.

She said those among the protesters from Darfur, where conflict is still raging, were more likely to fulfil criteria for resettlement. But the UNHCR had broken off negotiations to end the sit-in last week after leaders had insisted on relocation for the whole group.

Chad steps up claims of Sudanese subversion

From AFP, reprinted on Sudan.Net...

Chad made fresh claims Friday that Khartoum supported Chadian rebels, alleging the insurgents had been given airtime on Sudanese television and that Sudanese nationals were among prisoners taken after a recent rebel raid on a Chadian border town.

"It seems clear that Sudan is arming, financing and equipping Chadian rebels on its territory to destabilise Chad," Deputy Foreign Minister Lucienne Dillah told parliament in Ndjamena, which then voted to back President Idriss Deby's efforts to defend the country.

"The presence of Sudanese among the attackers taken prisoner (after the December 18 attack on Adre) is a blatant example," she added, reading from a memorandum.

"Khartoum warmly welcomed the desertion of some elements of the Chadian army and the defection of some senior officials in December," she said.

The deputy minister went on to claim that leaders of the rebels who attacked the border town "made several appearances on Sudanese television before satellite channel Al-Jazeera showed the Chadian rebel base on Sudanese soil on December 11."

The memorandum included photographs showing the leader of the rebel Rally for Democracy and Liberty, Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim, who recently deserted from the Chadian army, posing next to President Omar el-Beshir of Sudan.

After Dillah spoke, lawmakers called on Khartoum not to jeopardize "the historic links" between Sudan and Chad.

After the attack on Adre, Chad declared itself to be in a "state of belligerance" with Chad.

On Tuesday, Deby met the chairman of the African Union, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, to make a formal protest about Sudan's "aggression."

Obasanjo said the AU would set up a commission of enquiry to investigate Chad's complaints, as well as Sudan's version of the "differences" between the neighbours.

Uganda Street Children Falling Through Cracks in Response to War and Aids

Uganda-CAN also links to this original allAfrica feature from early in the week...

The small, dirty hands obsessively fold and refold a wrinkled shirt on the long conference table, as if checking to make sure it's still there, and this isn't a dream.

It's Christmas in Gulu in northern Uganda's war zone, and about 20 street children have gathered in the local government's department of social welfare for the lure of free used clothing. The shirt or pants - both shirt and pants for a few lucky ones - will be the only gift they'll get this year.

Joseph Kilama, a social worker in the department, has met increasingly with this group of boys, trying to win their trust and get them off Gulu's dusty, littered streets. He first became aware of the magnitude of the problem when a few were arrested for stealing in the market and thrown into a jail for adults. Most of the boys are 12-14 years old.

"Many of them lost their parents because of the war," Kilama said. "Besides that, this war has brought a lot of poverty, so many of their relatives are not able to care for them."

Northern Uganda's 18-year-old conflict has targeted children in particular. An estimated 23,000-25,000 children have been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and transformed into terrified and terrifying child soldiers, often tortured, raped and given the choice to kill or be killed.

More than one million people - about 80 percent of the region's population - have been forced to flee their homes for safety. But that safety is marginal - the camps for internally displaced people (called IDPs) are still attacked periodically by the LRA, and children are kidnapped as new recruits.

In the past, children orphaned by the war would be absorbed into the extended family, Kilama said, but the persisting conflict and the added burden of the HIV/Aids epidemic has resulted in an erosion of the social fabric. The dual catastrophes have strained families' willingness and ability to care for orphaned children. Gulu has one of the highest HIV-prevalence rates in the country, according to national surveillance surveys.

If an adult in the extended family falls sick with an Aids-related illness, Kilama said, the orphan will be pulled out of school to provide care. If there isn't enough food to go around, the orphan will get less.

Kilama said the boys living on Gulu's streets bear the scars of beatings so severe that he calls it "torture." He says it is little wonder many of them have run away, some of them from as far as Kitgum and Lira. Some of the boys have been living on their own for as many as six years.

The focus by international and local organizations on former LRA abductees, who have escaped or been freed in military actions, as well as on the "night commuters" - children who live in the vulnerable IDP camps but walk miles into town each night to sleep in greater safety - is justified, Kilama said. [But] it ignores children like Edison and his companions, who don't fit into either category.

"They have broken relationships with their families," Kilama said. He said he is not sure why there aren't any girls living on Gulu's streets, but guesses that perhaps the families keep a tighter rein on the girls, expecting them to work in the home.

Each morning, Kilama or one of his colleagues checks the cells at the local jail. There is a building that has been designated for a juvenile center, but not enough funds to renovate it, so boys are thrown into the adult prison. Kilama secures the the boys' release, but with no juvenile center or families to contact, he has little choice but to take them back to the streets.

"I think it is the hardship which makes them commit crimes," Kilama said, noting that the boys usually steal food.

When asked if they want to return to school, all of the boys raise their hands and clamor that they would, but don't have money for school fees. Sam Thabo said that after the Christmas period, he plans to go back to his family and try again.

Many of the boys sleep in the night commuter shelters each night, too afraid of the cold to stay on the streets. But others prefer to sleep outdoors, so they can more easily gather the discarded bottles and tins that litter Gulu's roads. They can sell these for a few hundred shillings - about 10 cents - enough to buy a meal. Mostly, though, the boys eat out of the garbage.

Sitting here in the conference room, the boys loudly joke with each other, but each grows silent as his name is called by Kilama. In turn, each goes to the front, sits next to Kilama, who smiles at them reassuringly, and begins to answer a series of questions about his whereabouts for the last several weeks.

Edison has just found out on the streets that his mother has died.

Another boy says through Kilama that his idea of a good Christmas is "when he eats good food, his body is clean, and he's also happy."

The regular meetings with Kilama brought a dividend for little Sam Thabo. When a Ugandan journalist recorded messages from the boys for Christmas and put them on the radio, Sam's relatives heard and came to Gulu to collect him. Kilama said he plans to follow up to see that Sam is adjusting well to life with his family.

What he really wants, Kilama said, are the resources to track down the families of all the boys who live on Gulu's streets and return them to their homes. He said with just three people in his department, and the responsibility of coordinating all programs targeting children in Gulu district, this is a tall order.

"What I don't see very well is the future of these children if they are left in the town," Kilama said. "Every child has equal rights, even these children."

Attack on Rebels in Uganda Kills 20 / Ugandan Army Confident of Victory over LRA Within One Year

Two stories from a few days ago (thanks to Uganda-CAN):

From the AP...

Ground troops and a helicopter gunship attacked rebel fighters in northern Uganda, killing 20 insurgents, an army spokesman said Wednesday.

A group of about 35 rebels were targeted in the attack Tuesday evening. Three were captured and the rest fled into the bush, Lt. Chris Magezi told The Associated Press.

The army suffered no casualties in the assault in Pader District, 236 miles north of Uganda's capital, Kampala, Magezi said.

The district is one of three hardest hit by a 19-year civil war that is being waged by the elusive Lord's Resistance Army rebels.

The government's counterinsurgency tactics and rebels' brutal attacks, abduction of children and mutilation of civilians have forced more than 1.5 million people from their homes in the long-running civil conflict.

The army has killed 30 insurgents since Dec. 24 including a senior commander, Magezi said.

The Lord's Resistance Army is made up of the remnants of a northern rebellion that began after President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, took power in 1986.

From VOA...

The Ugandan military is in a buoyant mood right now, believing it has the upper hand in the war against the rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Military officials are even predicting the war might end within a year. 

Wednesday, the military announced the outcome of an attack against 35 rebels in which 20 were killed.  The attack took place in Pader District, 380 kilometers north of Uganda’s capital, Kampala.  Pader District is one of the three areas hardest hit in the civil war. The violence has forced one and a half million people to flee their homes.  Most now live in camps guarded by the military. 

Major Felix Kulayigye is a spokesman for the army.  English to Africa’s Ruby Ofori asked him to give a broad picture of how the war is going.

He says, “The broad picture of the war right now is that it is on the descending trend. We have small groups (of rebels) of three to five, maximum ten that are trying to avoid detection. True, we have a bigger group with (LRA leader Joseph) Koney in southern Sudan of about 100 or 120. Then you have another group…in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But overall, the picture in northern Uganda is that the Lord’s Resistance Army can no longer commit crimes, can no longer abduct, can no longer block roads, can longer lay landmines. So, we are looking at the situation where areas…in north and northeastern Uganda the population is now leaving the internally displaced peoples camp to go back to their homes. And have hope that very soon, the rest of Pader, Kitgum and Gulu (districts) will start going home soon.”

Major Kulayigye says the LRA no longer has any support and he says he believes the war in the north, which has lasted some 20 years, could end within one year.

Uganda conflict in January's "Christianity Today"

The CT site has posted three items from the January issue's cover package on the conflict in Uganda...

"Deliver Us from Kony: Why the children of Uganda are killing one another in the name of the Lord" (primary story)

"Brutality Therapy: Love and art are keys to healing" (sidebar story)

"Peace Not Out of Reach: What American Christians can do to help resolve the LRA conflict" (sidebar interview with Rory Anderson of World Vision)

Drought-hit East Africa faces acute hunger - monitor / Aid Group Warns of Famine in East Africa / Famine threatens Horn of Africa

Three wire-service stories (updated Saturday to add the ones from the AP and AFP):

From Reuters...

Millions of people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia who need pasture and water for their livestock face acute food shortages because of poor rains, a U.S.-based monitoring unit said [earlier this week].

In a report on the three East African countries, the Famine Early Warning System Network ([FEWS NET]) said about 2 million people in southern Somalia and more than one million in Ethiopia's Somali region need urgent humanitarian aid.

In Kenya, dozens of pastoralists and hundreds of their animals have already died of hunger and thirst during a three-month drought in the arid eastern and northern regions.

[FEWS NET] said the situation in the region was alarming because of reports of a rise in malnutrition, child deaths, livestock deaths and crop wilting in agricultural areas.

"(These) pre-famine conditions at this early stage are alarming," the [FEWS NET] report said of Ethiopia's Somali region.

"Drought has also affected neighbouring eastern Kenya where reports indicate a severe shortage of pasture and water and consequent poor physical condition and death of livestock."

Pastoralists move with the seasons to find food and water for their animals.

Kenyan officials say 2.5 million people are affected and President Mwai Kibaki announced on Dec. 24 that the government would give about $40 million to help the region.

Kibaki visited northern Kenya this week and ordered the military to provide emergency assistance there. Presidential spokesman Isaiya Kabira said the World Food Programme (WFP) had agreed to give the government money to conduct a speedy assessment to establish where help was needed most. The study is expected to be complete by next week.

Critics have accused the government of being slow to recognise the threat of famine and asked Kibaki to declare a state of emergency to attract more food donations.

But Kabira said the reponse had so far been satisfactory. "The response from the private sector has been very good," he told Reuters.

From the AP...

Drought has triggered extreme food shortages in three East African countries, putting millions of people at risk of famine as the lean dry season approaches, a humanitarian group said [earler in the week].

Pre-famine conditions have already emerged in eastern Ethiopia, including escalating malnutrition, reports of child deaths, and human and livestock migration, the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network said.

A preliminary assessment shows that more than a million Ethiopian cattle herders will face serious water, pasture and food shortages in the first half of 2006. The crisis will peak from January to March, the group said.

Drought has led to food shortages in neighboring Kenya, where 1.2 million people are expected to be affected over the next two months, a Kenyan official said. The government said it would take immediate emergency measures to deliver food to those at risk.

About 1.3 million Kenyans already receive food aid from the government because they don't harvest enough food or don't have sizable herds to sell.

In Somalia, about 2 million people need humanitarian aid, including food and water, medical supplies and security assistance. The drought has led to increases in admissions of severely malnourished children to feeding centers in the south.

About 70,000 tons of food aid are needed through June to feed those hit by drought in Somalia, but only 18,000 tons are available, the United Nations' food aid agency said.

From AFP...

Somalia's transitional president on Thursday appealed for $60-million in urgent aid for about two million southern Somalis facing severe food and water shortages amid an increasing threat of famine across large swaths of the drought-stricken Horn of Africa.

In a statement released as drought and pre-famine conditions have triggered dire warnings that many more millions are at risk of starvation in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed urged donors not to forget about Somalis in need.

"There is a humanitarian emergency throughout southern Somalia," he said, describing the situation as "volatile" among the mainly nomadic pastoralist population in the area.

"All the livestock and an estimated two million people face that danger."

Yusuf's statement was issued from the provincial town of Jowhar north of the capital where he and a part of Somalia's badly fractured transitional administration are based amid a deepening dispute over the seat of government with Mogadishu warlords.

In the Kenyan capital, a Somali government official said the appeal was for cash and "food, medicine, water and other essential goods" that are in short-supply in southern Somalia, which has been beset by chronic food insecurity due to poor rains, crop failures and insecurity.

On Wednesday, the United States government's Famine Early Warning System Network (Fews) issued emergency alerts for southern Somalia, Ethiopia's southern Somali region and Kenya's northeast, all of which have been badly affected by drought.

"The lives and livelihoods of the population in these regions will be at risk over the coming months," it said of southern Somalia. "Increased humanitarian interventions are urgently required."

"The situation is equally bad in northeastern Kenya and parts of Ethiopia bordering southern Somalia," Fews said.

In northeastern Kenya, where at least 20 people have died from hunger and related illnesses this month and the at-risk population is expected to rise from 1,3-million to 2,5-million by February, it said additional aid was urgently needed.

"Projected increases in beneficiary numbers combined with limited donor pledges and a food-aid pipeline that is expected to be exhausted in February 2006 require immediate action ... to avoid the loss of lives and livelihood assets," it said.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, who visited the worst-hit areas this week, has already appealed for $100-million (€84-million) in emergency relief for victims of what the local media has dubbed the "Christmas famine."

In Ethiopia's southern Somali region, Fews said about one million pastoralists and their livestock were facing "pre-famine conditions" and that immediate assistance was needed to prevent the situation from deteriorating.

"Urgent responses [are] required to prevent an alarming escalation of food insecurity crisis" in the Somali region, it said.

While conditions are roughly similiar in all three nations, Somalia poses extraordinary challenges for relief workers as lawlessness and insecurity are rampant in the country which has had no functioning central government for the past 14 years.

A surge in piracy off the Somali coast this year -- in which two UN-chartered food aid vessels have been hijacked -- has severely affected the flow of relief supplies to the nation that the United Nations says is suffering from a largely forgotten "continuing humanitarian crisis".

Earlier this month, the United Nations launched an appeal for $174-million (€145-million) in assistance for the country noting that donors had thus far this year contributed only about half of the $162-million (€136-million) needed for 2005.

Sudan to close its embassy in Baghdad - official

Two wire-service stories that update, most recently, yesterday's "Iraq Qaeda claims abduction of 5 Sudanese - Web" (updated to add the one from the AP):

From Reuters...

(The original brief alert is also still available on AlertNet.)

Sudan said on Friday it would shut its embassy in Baghdad, a day after al Qaeda in Iraq said it had kidnapped five Sudanese embassy staff last week and demanded that Khartoum cut its ties with Baghdad within 48 hours.

"Sudan has decided to close its diplomatic mission in Iraq and to withdraw its diplomatic staff," Jamal Ibrahim, the Sudanese foreign ministry's spokesman, told Reuters by telephone. He had no further comment.

Al Qaeda in Iraq said on Thursday it was behind the abduction of the Sudanese embassy staff, including a diplomat, according to a Web statement.

A video posted with the statement showed five men identifying themselves as embassy staff.

"I call on the Sudanese government to carry out the demand ... to withdraw the diplomatic mission," said a man who identified himself as Abdul-Munem Mohammed al-Houri, the embassy's second secretary. The Sudanese foreign ministry said last Friday that six Sudanese men, including the embassy's second secretary, had been kidnapped in Baghdad after attending Muslim prayers.

The al Qaeda in Iraq group said in the Web statement it gave "the Sudanese government 48 hours to announce in a clear way ... that it was severing relations with the (Iraqi) government and closing its embassy in Baghdad".

The statement could not be authenticated, but was posted on a main Web site frequently used by Iraqi insurgent groups.

Insurgents have often kidnapped foreigners to put pressure on their governments to break ties with Baghdad. Some foreigners have been abducted by groups seeking ransom.

From the AP...

Sudan will close its embassy in Baghdad in an effort to win the release of six kidnapped employees, a Sudanese diplomat said Friday, a day after al-Qaida in Iraq threatened to kill the captives if the diplomatic mission remained.

Al-Qaida in Iraq, which has kidnapped and killed a string of Arab diplomats and embassy employees in a campaign to scare Arab governments from setting up full diplomatic missions in Iraq, had set a Saturday deadline for Sudan to ``announce clearly that it is cutting its relations'' with the Iraqi government, or it would kill five Sudanese hostages.

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry reported on Dec. 24 that six of its embassy employees were kidnapped - including the mission's second secretary. It was not immediately clear if the al-Qaida statement referred to the same group.

``A statement was issued by the Sudanese government to close the embassy in Iraq to win the release of our kidnapped citizens,'' the embassy's charge d'affairs, Mohamed Ahmed Khalil, told The Associated Press. He added that the embassy's 12 employees would leave on Monday.

The Qatari-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel on Thursday showed video it said it received from the kidnappers, showing the five Sudanese sitting on chairs, talking to the camera, but no audio was heard. The video also showed ID documents from the Sudanese Embassy, but the names could not be discerned.

Al-Qaida's statement said if Sudan did not close its embassy, ``this government will bear the responsibility of presenting their diplomats as sacrifices.''

The terror group said it had previously warned Arab nations of its ``war against what is called the diplomatic missions in Baghdad,'' adding that the governments had ignored it, ``still getting closer to the infidel Crusaders and Jews.''

In July, al-Qaida abducted the top Egyptian envoy in Baghdad, Ihab al-Sherif, and two Algerian diplomats. It later announced they had been killed. The group also snatched two Moroccan embassy employees in June and said that it had sentenced them to death, though it never stated whether it carried out the sentences.

Egypt Police and Sudanese Clash; 20 Refugees Killed

Twelve stories and other items (some newer than others) that update last night's "Sudanese refugees forced to dismantle protest camp in Egypt / Egypt police fire water cannons at Sudan protesters" (updated originally to reflect newer versions of the stories from Bloomberg, DPA, the AP, and Reuters; updated further to reflect a still-newer Bloomberg story and newer versions from the BBC and VOA, as well as to add the eyewitness and analysis items from the BBC; updated still further to reflect an even-newer version of the story from Reuters, as well as to add two more versions from AFP [one apparently newer, the other apparently from earlier]):

(Note that some of these rely on official statements, while others do include significant on-the-scene reporting.  The BBC site also has an online photo gallery, as well as streaming video linked from some of the source pages.)

From Bloomberg...

(The earlier versions are also still available.)

Twelve Sudanese refugees were killed and 20 injured when Egyptian riot police broke up their three- month protest outside United Nations offices in Cairo today [Friday], Egypt's Interior Ministry said.

Seventy-four policemen were among the casualties when the evacuation prompted a stampede, said a ministry spokesman who requested anonymity. Police forcibly removed the refugees from makeshift homes in a public garden opposite a mosque after they refused to heed a deadline from the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo to move out by late yesterday, the spokesman said.

``The Sudanese Embassy asked them to leave because of the health risks they were posing,'' according to a ministry statement read by the spokesman during a telephone interview. ``The Egyptian security forces were implementing the deadline imposed by the Sudanese Embassy.''

The 2,500 refugees, who fled neighboring Sudan after years of civil war, began the Cairo protest Sept. 29 to demand that they be resettled outside of Egypt, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement.

The Sudanese government responded to the clashes by urging the refugees to go home, Agence France-Presse reported. ``The door is open for the protesters to return to Sudan,'' AFP cited Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Kerti as saying.

The Sudanese died after being hospitalized for injuries sustained in the clash with police, the Interior Ministry spokesman said. The refugees hurled rocks, glass and other objects at officers, the spokesman said.

`No Justification'

UNHCR condemned the violence and said it had been working to resolve the situation peacefully.

``I am deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic events early today in Cairo,'' High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said in Geneva, according to the statement. ``There is no justification for such violence and loss of life.''

About 5,000 police were deployed and used water cannon to disperse the protesters. Officers armed with sticks and shields then stormed the square where the refugees were camped out in Cairo's Mohandessin district, AFP reported. The refugees were forced onto buses; the destination of the vehicles wasn't clear, AFP said.

From DPA...

(The original version is also still available.)

Clashes between Sudanese refugees and security police attempting to break up their protest camp in a Cairo public park have left at least 10 Sudanese dead and 23 policemen injured, Egyptian state news agency MENA said Friday quoting security sources.

The overnight violence resulted in the injury of 30 refugees, of whom ten died in hospital, MENA reported.

More than 3,000 refugees from southern Sudan have been protesting in one of the capital's largest squares since last September to demand that the United Nations, whose office lies some blocks away, recognize them as refugees and move them to a Western country.

Three hours of negotiations with the refugees failed to convince them to end their protest, MENA reported. The protestors assailed policemen and hurled empty bottles and sticks, causing the injury of 23 policemen.

Eyewitnesses said around 2,000 riot police armed with water [cannons], truncheons and tear gas were seen storming the park Thursday midnight. They forced the refugees into buses and transported them to a provisional camp where they will await a decision on their refugee status from the U.N.'s refugee body, the UNHCR.

Egypt is home to about two to three million Sudanese refugees, mainly from southern Sudan, who have fled the civil war.

Deprived of the legal status to work and unable to return to their country for security reasons, most Sudanese refugees in Egypt have asked to be granted official refugee status by the U.N. and be resettled to a third country in the West.

According to the UNHCR, three people have died due to the poor conditions in the protest camp during the past three months. The Sudanese claim ten have died.

From the AP...

(Several earlier versions are also still available.)

Egyptian police turned water cannons on Sudanese war refugees and beat them with sticks Friday, seeking to end a three-month protest at the ramshackle squatters camp in a small city park. At least a dozen people were killed, according to government figures, and one of the protest leaders estimated the deaths at more than double that.

Hundreds of Sudanese have been living in the park since September to protest the U.N. refugee agency's refusal to consider them for refugee status. They want to be resettled in a third country, such as the United States or Britain, rather than go home after a peace deal ended the 21-year-long civil war in Sudan.

In Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, expressed his shock and sadness over the violence and deaths.

``Although we still do not have all of the details or a clear picture of what transpired, violence left several people dead and injured,'' Guterres said. ``There is no justification for such violence and loss of life. This is a terrible tragedy and our condolences go to all the families of those who died and to the injured.''

The Egyptian Interior Ministry said it had acted in part after the UNHCR asked for protection because it had received ``threats to attack the commission offices and its members.''

The Interior ministry blamed the violence on the Sudanese and said the dead and injured were victims of a stampede.

``Attempts had been made to convince them to disperse, but to no avail,'' the ministry said in a statement. ``The migrants' leaders resorted to incitement and attacks against the police.''

In a showdown played out during the first five hours of Friday, the protesters dismantled their plastic sheeting and cardboard, but most refused to leave on buses brought in to take them to camps elsewhere in Cairo.

Shortly before dawn, thousands of riot police encircled the camp, set up near the refugee agency to draw attention to the refugees' demands. Police fired water cannons at the protesters, then invaded the park when the Sudanese refused to leave.

Protesters could be seen fighting back with long sticks that appeared to be supports for makeshift tents.

Police beat the unarmed migrants with batons, continuing to hit them even as they were being dragged to the buses. One officer carried a girl of about 3 or 4 years old who was unconscious. An ambulance worker said the girl was dead.

A policeman clubbed a Sudanese man with a tree branch as two officers hauled the refugee away.

An official Interior Ministry statement said 12 protesters died and 74 police were wounded, but other ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, put the number of dead at 20.

Boutrous Deng, one of the protest leaders, told The Associated Press that 26 Sudanese were killed. He said the dead included 17 men, two women and seven children.

Officials at the South Center, an independent Sudanese human rights group, said 1,280 refugees were taken by bus to three locations outside Cairo. In a statement faxed to AP in Cairo, the group described the police assault as ``savage.''

The refugee agency said last week that it had reached a deal with some of the protest leaders, promising to resume hearing some migrants' cases and offering a one-time payment of up to $700 for housing in Egypt. But most of the migrants rejected the deal, saying they wanted promises of resettlement abroad.

``It is extremely sad that people had to die,'' said Astrid Van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Cairo.

The agency stopped hearing the cases of Sudanese seeking refugee status after a January peace deal ended the war in their home country.

At times the Sudanese numbered up to 2,000 in the camp, about the size of four tennis courts. At least three refugees have died in the camp, including a 4-year-old boy who succumbed to pneumonia earlier this month.

About 30,000 Sudanese are registered as refugees in Egypt, and estimates of Sudanese living in the country have ranged from 200,000 to several million.

But Egypt, which suffers from high unemployment and strained social services for its own population of 72 million, offers the Sudanese little assistance, and the Sudanese complain of discrimination by Egyptians.

From SAPA/AFP...

The head of the United Nations refugee agency said he was "deeply shocked" that Egyptian riot police forcibly broke up a three-month protest outside UN offices in Cairo in which 10 Sudanese refugees were killed on Friday.

"I am deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic events early today in Cairo," High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in Geneva.

"Although we still do not have all of the details or a clear picture of what transpired, violence left several people dead and injured.

"There is no justification for such violence and loss of life. This is a terrible tragedy and our condolences go to all the families of those who died and to the injured," he said.

Police armed with sticks and shields stormed the small square where the Sudanese had been camping at around 5am (3am GMT).

"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.

An AFP reporter saw several people being dragged away from the mayhem as the refugees -- including dozens of women and small children -- tried to resist their evacuation.

The refugees are demanding that the UN refugee agency review the cases of asylum-seekers whose applications it has rejected and resume resettling refugees in third countries, mainly the United States, Canada and Australia.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has offered to provide more assistance to the refugees but has refused to resettle them in a third country.

But most of the Sudanese refugees say they simply want to leave Egypt, where they say the UN office has ignored their plight.

"They are primarily protesting living conditions," UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis told Agence France Presse in Geneva.

"We can't possibly resettle all the people. Resettlement is normally reserved for the most vulnerable cases," she added.

There are around 24 00 Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers in Cairo, although the majority have not applied for formal refugee status, Pagonis said.

Overall, they make up between one and two percent of the millions of Sudanese who have fled to Egypt to escape conflict at home.

A 21-year north-south civil war in Sudan which ended a year ago displaced about four million people, while an ongoing conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur has also forced tens of thousands to flee the country.

Alternate (apparently newer) AFP story...

At least 10 Sudanese refugees were killed on Friday after several thousand Egyptian riot police using sticks and water [cannons] forcibly broke up a protest outside the United Nations offices.

Police armed with batons and shields stormed the small square, where the Sudanese had been camping at about 05:00 after failing to convince the refugees to end a three-month sit-in.

The interior ministry said: "There was a stampede that left 30 of the protesters injured, most of them the elderly and young and they were immediately taken to the hospital, where 10 of them died."

The UN high commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said he was "deeply shocked" by the deaths.

'This is a terrible tragedy'

He said: "There is no justification for such violence and loss of life. This is a terrible tragedy and our condolences go to all the families of those who died and to the injured."

Several people were being dragged away from the mayhem as refugees - including dozens of women and small children - tried to resist their evacuation.

The refugees were forced into dozens of buses in Cairo's upmarket neighbourhood of Mohandessin, ending a standoff that had lasted most of the night.

One protester shouted: "They want to kill us. Our demands are legitimate, it is our right to protest here, the only right we have."

Water cannon disperses refugees

Police - numbering close to 5 000 for the operation - initially used water [cannons] to disperse the refugees.

At dawn, the square in front of the Mustafa Mahmud mosque, wedged between plush high-rises and banks, had been turned into a desolate field littered with mattresses, blankets and personal belongings.

Clothes spilled out of suitcases while refugee cards and family photo albums floated in puddles of water.

Most protestors were taken to a sealed military training camp in Tora Balad, a town 30km south of central Cairo, which was home to a large prison notorious for its political detentions.

One refugee claimed that another three children died of their wounds in the dormitories, where they were herded by security.

Refugees suffering from diseases

A refugee from southern Sudan who identified himself only as Bob, said: "Three children died after we arrived."

He said police brought in doctors to treat light injuries, while the more serious cases were evacuated by ambulance.

Many refugees were already suffering from diseases caused by the deterioration of sanitary conditions in the crowded camp.

The Egyptian foreign ministry offered no apology for the deaths and emphasised that the operation was necessary as the refugees were violating the law.

The Cairo governor ordered the distribution of blankets and hot meals.

Alternate (apparently older) AFP story...

Ten Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers were killed on Friday when Egyptian police forcefully broke up a three-month protest they'd been staging outside UN offices in Cairo, the interior ministry said.

"There was a stampede that left 30 of the protesters injured, most of them the elderly and young and they were immediately taken to the hospital where 10 of them died," said a ministry statement.

Several refugees were wounded when phalanxes of riot police armed with sticks and shields stormed the small square where the Sudanese had been camping at around 05:00.

An AFP reporter saw several people being dragged away from the mayhem, as the refugees - including dozens of women and small children - tried to resist their evacuation.

The refugees were forced into dozens of buses lined up on one of the main thoroughfares in Cairo's upmarket neighbourhood of Mohandessin, ending a standoff that had lasted most of the night.

Water cannons used

"They want to kill us," shouted one protester, as he was frog-walked towards a bus. "Our demands are legitimate, it is our right to protest here, the only right we have."

The police forces - who numbered close to 5 000 in the neighbourhood for the operation - initially used water cannons in a bid to disperse the refugees.

The protesters had been sleeping under the polluted Cairo sky for three months, fighting temperatures which have dipped well below 10 degrees Celsius lately with plastic sheets, cardboard and blankets.

A 21-year north-south civil war in Sudan which ended a year ago had displaced some four million people, while an ongoing conflict in the western region of Darfur has also forced scores to flee the country.

The refugees are demanding the UN refugee agency review cases of asylum-seekers whose applications it has rejected and resume resettling refugees in third countries, mainly the United States, Canada and Australia.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has offered to provide more assistance to the refugees but has refused to resettle them in a third country.

'The trust is gone'

But most of the Sudanese refugees explain they simply want to leave Egypt, where they say the UN office has ignored their plight.

"The trust is gone. We will be happy if we end up in any other country, but look how this Arab country is treating us, just because we are black. It's a disgrace," Paul, a young refugee from the southern Sudanese city of Juba, said just before being evacuated.

"They are telling us to go back because the war is over but it's not so simple," said George Oliver, a 20-year-old from the same region.

"There are people here from all parts of the country who have had problems with the army. I seized from the street in Khartoum and drafted by force in the military. Now I am here, if I go back to Sudan, they will find me," he said.

It wasn't immediately known where the security forces drove the refugees to.

From IRIN...

At least 10 Sudanese asylum seekers died on Friday following a stampede as Egyptian police tried to move them from a sit-in protest in Cairo.

Some 3,000 protesters had been camped near UN offices for three months. Their demands ranged from better rights and conditions in Egypt to resettlement in another country.

See previous report: UNHCR office temporarily halts operations

However, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has said many were simply not entitled to the demands they were making.

“Resettlement isn’t a right,” UNHCR public relations officer Amina Koreya told IRIN in November.

On Friday morning, riot police fired water cannons at the protesters who refused to leave. This reportedly resulted in a stampede and the deaths.

"There was a stampede that left 30 of the protesters injured, most of them the elderly and young and they were immediately taken to the hospital where 10 of them died," the interior ministry said in a statement.

“Thousands of police armed with sticks and shields stormed the small park where the migrants had been camping, at about 0500 (0300 GMT),” the BBC said.

The sit-in started after the UNHCR stopped aid to Sudanese who had already been refused refugee status.

This followed after the Sudanese government and the Southern People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) signed a comprehensive peace agreement in January, ostensibly bringing peace to southern Sudan, ravaged by two decades of civil war.

Following the accord, UNHCR suspended refugee status determination for Sudanese asylum applications, while saying it would support the voluntary repatriation of refugees from the south by pledging $250 to every family choosing to return.

The agency was forced to temporarily close its offices processing applications for asylum seekers in mid November as the protest grew in numbers preventing the agency from continuing its work.

Several people have died and a number of babies have been born at the site since the protest started, the BBC reported. Out of an estimated 90,000 refugees currently living in Egypt, some 20,000 are Sudanese or Somali.

From Reuters...

(Some earlier versions are also still available on AlertNet.)

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 a 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 U.N. 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 U.N. 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.

From VOA...

At least 20 people are dead after Egyptian riot police stormed the improvised refugee camp in an upscale Cairo neighborhood. Several thousand Sudanese migrants had been camped outside the offices of the U.N. refugee agency for three months, demanding resettlement in another country. After a night-long standoff, police attacked the migrants, and at least one small child is among those killed.

Ambulances raced to tend to the wounded after police stormed the makeshift refugee camp about an hour before dawn. They beat refugees, including women and children, dragged them out of the square and forced them onto buses. A VOA reporter saw many people being carried away, apparently badly injured or unconscious.

Police had cordoned off the area a little before midnight local time, and flooded the neighborhood with about 5,000 officers in full riot gear, armed with truncheons. A standoff then dragged on most of the night. Police used water cannons to try to disperse the protesters, but the Sudanese migrants refused to budge.

After hours of negotiations with the protest leaders, the police suddenly stormed the camp and began beating the asylum-seekers with sticks and batons. The Interior Ministry says at least 10 people were killed. One of the casualties was a little girl, believed to be three or four years old, who was pronounced dead by an ambulance officer at the scene.

The Interior Ministry blamed the violence on the protesters and claimed that the deaths were caused by a stampede.

But a VOA reporter who watched the scene unfold saw no stampede. The Sudanese migrants made no attempt to flee, and they would have had nowhere to go if they had tried to run. They were surrounded by riot police who had cordoned off the entire neighborhood and attacked them from all sides.

It is not clear what Egyptian authorities intend to do with the Sudanese migrants. Local news reports indicate that they were temporarily taken to a military barracks.

About 2,000 Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers had been camped out for three months in a small square a little larger than a tennis court in the upscale neighborhood of Mohandisseen. Tents made of cardboard, blankets and plastic sheeting offered them little protection from the near-freezing temperatures. Their protest was aimed at the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, whose Cairo headquarters is a few blocks away.

They were demanding that the UNHCR resettle them in Europe or North America. They complained of discrimination in Egypt. The UNHCR has said they do not have the right to be resettled in another country.

There are more than 30,000 Sudanese refugees registered in Egypt, but the government offers them little in the way of assistance.

BBC news story...

(An earlier version is also still available.)

The UN refugee agency has expressed "shock" after up to 20 Sudanese migrants died during an operation by Egyptian police to break up their camp.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said there was no justification for the violence.

Thousands of police stormed the camp - which was set up near UN offices in September - wielding truncheons and firing water cannon at the protesters.

Several children were reported to be among the dead.

The migrants had been demanding that the UNHCR move them to a third country with better conditions.

Thousands of police armed with sticks and shields stormed the small park where the migrants had been camping, at about 0500 (0300 GMT) on Friday.

Witnesses said some refugees stood defiantly or fought back, while others fled.

"There was a stampede that left 30 of the protesters injured, most of them the elderly and young and they were immediately taken to the hospital where 10 of them died," the interior ministry said.

Later ministry sources raised the death toll to 20, while one of the protest leaders said 26 Sudanese were killed, including two women and seven children.

An official statement from the ministry said 74 police were wounded in the action. It accused migrant leaders of inciting attacks against the police.

Witnesses said the migrants, including women and small children, were dragged towards buses as they tried to resist leaving the ramshackle camp, leaving clothes, suitcases and makeshift tents scattered in their wake.

"They want to kill us," shouted one protester. "Our demands are legitimate - it is our right to protest here, the only right we have."

One of the Sudanese asylum-seekers, Napoleon Roberts, said he had been taken to a barracks south of the capital and was being held with about 1,700 others in disgusting conditions.

"We've been kept here since morning in disgust, and no water for drinking and no bathroom... people are staying still with their wounds on their bodies," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme. [see below]

Staff threatened

Up to 3,000 refugees had been living at the camp since it was set up on 29 September, many of them sleeping in the open.

The demonstration began after the UNHCR stopped aid to those who had applied and failed to get refugee status.

Tension rose, with UN staff who approached the camp being threatened, says the BBC's Imogen Foulkes from the UNHCR base, Geneva.

A spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Cairo, Astrid Stort, said the agency had tried to be accommodating but some of the migrants' demands were "unrealistic".

Sudan said on Friday the refugees should come home, after a peace deal ended its 21-year war with rebels in the south.

But the protesters say it is not safe to return.

A separate conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur has displaced some two million people and left tens of thousands dead.

Analysis feature by the BBC's Martin Plaut...

The Sudanese had been camped outside the offices of the United Nations refugee agency in Cairo for three months before the Egyptian police dispersed them.

They hope to be resettled to other countries.

But the UNHCR says it has no power to offer them what they want.

"We don't have a country that will take them," a UNHCR official said.

The trouble has been building up for a long time.

Three million Sudanese are in Egypt, many of them from troubled southern Sudan that has seen decades of civil war.

And over the years the UNHCR was able to find many new homes in Europe, the United States or other friendly countries.

Around 16,000 were resettled in the last 10 years.

Waning sympathy

But now the situation has changed. In January this year a peace agreement was signed between Khartoum and southern Sudan.

The sympathy of the international community has waned.

Now, it is argued, the refugees can go home.

But many have waited years to get to the West.

They argue they are discriminated against, and have little opportunity to earn decent wages in Egypt as they wait to find new homes.

The UNHCR points out that Egypt seldom deports them, and offers some education and health care.

This has done little to placate the Sudanese and this frustration has now boiled over.

Eyewitness account from the BBC...

Sudanese asylum seeker Napoleon Roberts told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme how Egyptian riot police forcibly moved him, along with some 3,000 others, from the park in Cairo where they have been living in protest for the past three months.

We have been kept here, in a military barracks, since this morning.

I would say that right now there are about 1,700 of us here.

There's no water for drinking and no bathrooms.

People are staying still, suffering from their wounds on their bodies.

It's very discomforting.

We don't know what is happening - no-one from the government has spoken to us, to tell us why we have been moved here.

Dragged

They dragged us from the park where we had been living in protest to here. They sprayed us with water canons and then beat us with sticks.

Some people have been killed.

I have heard some of the refugees that came on the first bus say that up to 48 people are dead.

When the police were dragging me out of the park and beating me, taking me to the bus, I was standing on bodies, moving on top of them.

They were underneath me. Lots of people were just lying on the ground.

When the police first began firing everyone with the water canons a lot of us, mainly babies and the elderly, fell down.

Trampled

They were then covered with plastic sheets and so everyone was going over the sheets that were over the bodies.

I would say because of this that the majority of the deaths are among the aged and the children.

They were trampled when we tried to escape being attacked by the police in the park.

And since we have been here in the camp some people have also died from their injuries.

Around me more than 100 are injured.

This morning two people died right here in the barracks I am in.

There are some two doctors assisting the wounded but it is not enough.