CAIRO -- Ten Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers were killed, the Egyptian interior ministry said, when thousands of Egyptian riot police forcefully evacuated hundreds of Sudanese refugees early on December 30, breaking up a three-month old protest outside UN offices in Cairo.

Phalanxes of riot police armed with sticks and shields stormed the small square where the Sudanese had been camping at around 5:00 am (0300 GMT).

Several people were 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.

"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 neighborhood 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 4 million people, while an ongoing conflict in the western region of Darfur has also forced scores to flee the country.

The refugees are demanding that 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.

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 was 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 was not immediately known where the security forces drove the refugees to.