The Egyptian authorities freed more than 230 Sudanese who had been detained and threatened with expulsion after police brutally broke up a protest in Cairo, the United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday.

"One hundred seventy-six women and children, as well as 57 Darfurians were released yesterday [Wednesday] and 39 are expected to be released today," said UNCHR spokesperson Astrid van Genderen Stort.

Presidential spokesperson Suleiman Awad had said on Tuesday that the Sudanese would not be expelled but van Genderen Stort stressed that the UNHCR had obtained no guarantees.

"We have not been given assurances from the authorities that the people detained will not be deported but we are hopeful," she said.

The new releases bring to around 400 the number of Sudanese freed out of the more than 600 detained late last month.

Thousands of riot police wielding batons and water canon broke up a three-month sit-in in central Cairo on December 30, killing at least 28 Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers, including women and children.

The UN agency has been interviewing the Sudanese -- whom the Egyptian authorities have threatened to deport -- to determine their status and whether they are entitled to international protection.

Most of the Sudanese who protested outside the UNHCR's office are from the south, where a civil war that lasted more than two decades and ended in January 2005 displaced more than four million people.

The group also included people from Darfur, where as many as 300 000 people have died in nearly three years of conflict between government forces and ethnic minority rebels fighting for greater autonomy for the western region.

Sudanese families in Cairo say that demonstrators are still unaccounted for, and several rights groups have called for an investigation into last month's violence. - Sapa-AFP