Sudan: Hundreds of armed police and soldiers surrounded a Sudanese refugee camp south of the capital Khartoum yesterday, where at least 17 police and residents died in clashes last week.
The armed forces sealed off the area, about 30km south of Khartoum, said a spokesman for the people of Soba Aradi.
"They have cordoned off all areas and have taken tough measures to stop people leaving," said Mohamed Ahmed Abdel Gader Arbab, a lawyer.
Clashes broke out last week when Sudanese police tried to relocate refugees mainly from southern Sudan away from the camp.
Officials said most of the victims died as crowds massed around the police station and burned it down.
Khartoum's governor, Abdul Haleem Mutafi, said police were looking for a list of people they suspected of stealing weapons and other "criminal activity".
This correspondent saw at least 20 police vehicles and six lorries full of soldiers in an area outside the camp. The police were heavily armed, with machine guns mounted on many of the vehicles. They were searching homes and had beaten some people before taking them away.
A Reuters photographer and a driver as well as a BBC correspondent were released from police custody after being beaten and detained.
Slums and camps surrounding the sprawling capital are home to more than two million people, mostly southerners displaced by two decades of civil war.
The slum areas around Khartoum have little or no running water or electricity, and aid agencies have found it difficult to improve the situation there.
Khartoum authorities say they want to demolish the slums to relocate residents to permanent, planned housing plots.
But the United Nations criticises the policy, saying the authorities have failed to consult the people being moved, and that refugees were being moved to desert areas far from the capital and where there are no services.
Meanwhile, Nato has said that it will offer airlift, training and other logistics support to African Union (AU) peacekeeping forces being deployed in Sudan's Darfur region, Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said.
Mr de Hoop Scheffer said envoys to the alliance had agreed a package of measures to be offered to the AU at an international conference in Addis Ababa tomorrow. He said the Nato contribution would be fully co-ordinated with efforts by the European Union and the United Nations, whose secretary general, Kofi Annan, is expected in the region tomorrow.
The European Union pledged on Monday to offer the air transport needed to send thousands of extra African troops to Darfur, together with other support ranging from military trainers to observation units.
The AU has said it would more than triple its existing mission to 7,700 troops by late September and has ruled out any non-African forces on the ground in the region.