Egypt has begun mass deportations of detained Eritrean asylum seekers to Asmara and plans to forcibly return hundreds more in a move Amnesty International said puts them at serious risk of torture.

Egypt, already home to tens of thousands of African migrants, has seen a surge of Eritreans arrive in recent months, including Pentecostal Christians fleeing religious persecution and others trying to avoid military conscription, activists say.

London-based Amnesty said on Friday that a first batch of 200 asylum seekers was flown back to Eritrea on Wednesday on a special Egyptair flight after being denied access for months to representatives from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.

Another 200 were flown to the Horn of Africa nation on Thursday night, and more flights appeared to have been scheduled to deport 1,200 remaining detained Eritreans, Amnesty said.

Egyptian security sources confirmed some Eritreans had been deported and that authorities planned to deport hundreds more.

Amnesty said asylum seekers returned to Eritrea were likely to be detained incommunicado in inhumane conditions for weeks or years and were at "serious risk of torture".

"The asylum seekers knew they were being deported and started to beg the security forces not to deport them, and even threatened to kill themselves," Amnesty activist Mohamed Lotfy said, adding that women and children were among those deported. UNHCR said Egypt had cut off access to detained Eritrean migrants in February, leaving it unable to assess any asylum claims. UNHCR said it was unaware of any deportations.

But UNHCR said it was concerned for the fate of up to 1,600 mainly Eritrean migrants it believed were being held by Egypt who had been caught slipping into its territory either by land from Sudan or directly from Eritrea via the Red Sea.

"We remain seriously concerned about the situation, again, because the group includes women and children, said Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for UNHCR in Cairo. "Our office continues to request access."


MORE DEPORTATIONS MAY BE IMMINENT

Amnesty said it feared an additional 180 Eritrean asylum seekers could be deported on Friday night and urged Egypt to stop what it termed "flights to torture". Egyptian Foreign Ministry officials had no immediate comment.

UN guidance advises states against deporting even rejected asylum seekers to Eritrea on the grounds that they may be ill treated, according to UNHCR.

Egypt is under pressure to block the flow of mostly African migrants over its sensitive Sinai border into Israel. Egyptian police have shot dead at least 13 migrants at the Israel border this year and detained scores more.

UNHCR described the success of some migrants in using Egypt as a base to reach neighbouring Israel as a "pull factor" in drawing more Eritreans to Egypt, but also cited a deteriorating human rights situation in Eritrea.

Egyptian security sources said they believed the migrants had planned to slip into Israel. Egypt was also irked that the migrants tried to bypass its border controls, leaving Cairo potentially unaware of who was on its territory, activists say.

Amnesty said some of the Eritreans had already been recognised as refugees by UNHCR in neighbouring Sudan, and had fled that country fearing Sudanese authorities would forcibly return them to Eritrea.

Sudan ordered the closure of all Eritrean opposition offices in the country and a halt to their activities against the government of Isaias Afwerki earlier this month.