The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday that it has not requested an inquiry into the deaths of more than two dozen Sudanese refugees after Egyptian police forcibly broke up a three-month protest outside the agency's Cairo offices.

"We are not calling for an inquiry at this point in time," UNHCR spokesperson Astrid van Genderen Stort told reporters.

She made the comment as demands intensified for an independent inquiry into the deaths, which came after thousands of riot police wielding batons and firing water cannons stormed a park in Cairo last week.

Egyptian judicial sources said on Saturday that they would launch a government-led inquiry.

The refugees and asylum-seekers had called a sit-in at the park in Cairo's affluent Mohandiseen neighbourhood, aiming to draw attention to their cause.

A child died late on Sunday, medical sources said, increasing the death toll to 28. The young boy had been in a coma since he was hospitalised after the violent clashes.

Relatives said that despite his condition, the boy had remained cuffed to a bed.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch, local rights groups and opposition and independent MPs have all demanded a probe to determine the circumstances that led to the high number of fatalities.

"Given Egypt's terrible record of police brutality," HRW said in the wake of the incident, "an independent investigation is absolutely necessary to assess responsibility and punish those responsible".

The UNHCR's Stort maintained that her agency has not requested such an inquiry.

She also stressed that the UNHCR asked the Egyptian government to intervene and clear the park only after numerous lengthy negotiations with protest leaders failed to convince them to call off the action.

"Nothing that we proposed was being listened to. The demonstrators on the square wanted something impossible," Stort said.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has described the deaths as "a terrible tragedy that cannot be justified". - AFP