The official Sudanese newspaper, Suna, said the Kalma camp, located outside the southern Darfur city of Nyala had become "a harbor for outlaws, armed robbers, and rebel movements." The camp is home to some 80,000 people.
The paper added that police had opened fire on Monday morning in response to shots coming from the camp that injured five policemen.
"The forces will remain in its place until they enter the camp to collect the stockpiled weapons and prevent more rebels from getting inside the camp," Suna quoted the South Darfur security committee as saying.
The newspaper said the operation was launched after the police received information on the "arrival of large quantities of weapons into the camp with the aim of staging subversive acts and attacks against the government forces." It also denied reports of deaths during the raid, saying only seven people were wounded inside the camp.
Some media quoted rebel leaders as saying that the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) had stopped protecting the camp and did not take any measures to protect the refugees after the Sudanese troops began their raid.
The UN Mission in Sudan was established in 2005 to monitor the peace agreement between the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in southern Sudan, which ended the longest-running civil war in Africa.
The UN presence in Sudan has since been expanded to include peacekeeping operations in Darfur. Since 2003, Chad and Sudan have accused each other of inciting conflict on their common border, which runs along the west Sudanese region of Darfur.
According to international estimates, more than 200,000 people have been killed and around 2.5 million displaced in the ongoing conflict in Darfur.
