مصر الشقيقة أخت بلادى تضرب المثل فى إكرام الضيف!

Quote: By BEN CURTIS, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian police fired water cannons on Sudanese war refugees and beat them with sticks Friday as they tried to dismantle a camp in a city park where the refugees have squatted for months. Ten Sudanese, including elderly people and children, were killed, the government said. ADVERTISEMENT 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. Thousands of security forces moved in before midnight and closed off the area around the city park where the camp had been set up near the refugee agency. Police fired water cannons at the protesters, then invaded the park when the Sudanese still refused to leave. Police beat the unarmed migrants with batons, continuing to hit them even as they were being dragged to government buses waiting to take them away. One officer carried a girl of about 3 or 4 years old who was unconscious. An ambulance worker said the girl was dead. Thirty migrants, mostly elderly people and children, were wounded and transferred to a nearby hospital, where 10 of them died, the ministry said. Twenty-three policemen were also wounded. The Interior Ministry blamed the violence on the protesters. "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." The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees 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. The ministry said police were trying to move the migrants to "provisional camps where the commission can process their cases." At times the Sudanese numbered up to 2,000 in the ramshackle camp of plastic sheeting and cardboard located next to a main Cairo boulevard. 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.