Friday, December 30, 2005
Elder of ZiyonCAIRO (Reuters) - At least 10 Sudanese refugees died and around 50 were injured on Friday when Egyptian police dispersed a three-month sit-in by thousands of Sudanese demanding to be moved to another country, officials said.
The head of the local ambulance service, who did not want to be named, said 20 bodies had been taken to medical centres, but the number could not immediately be confirmed.
The Interior Ministry said 10 people had died in what it said was a stampede among the protesting refugees, who have been camped at the site in an affluent part of Cairo. It said 75 police officers were also injured when they tried to move them.
Witnesses said about 2,000 riot police stormed the camp site early on Friday and beat those inside with truncheons and sticks after officials had failed to persuade them to board buses waiting to take them to another site.
Pools of blood were visible on the pavement as men in the camp fought back with sticks and hurled bottles at the riot police, who also fired water cannon to try to disperse them.
About 4,000 police in total ringed the site, near the offices of the U.N. refugee agency, where the Sudanese had set up camp in squalid conditions in protest against what they said was poor treatment since they fled Sudan's lengthy civil war.
'The security forces were present to ensure a process of transporting those mentioned (Sudanese) and to prevent squatting,' the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Reuters witnesses said there were about six unconscious Sudanese, some of them young children, lying 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.'
Just another day in a country that gets $2 billion annually from the US.
