KAMPALA, Uganda  About 1,700 Rwandans seeking asylum have been herded onto trucks at gunpoint and driven across the border to Rwanda in what the United Nations has called an illegal operation to repatriate refugees.

According to human rights groups and the United Nations, the Ugandan police entered a refugee camp on Wednesday morning in southern Uganda and lured asylum seekers with promises of food, before surrounding them and forcing them onto trucks back to Rwanda. At least two refugees jumped out of trucks to their deaths, many more were injured and local news reports said some had been shot.

The United Nations on Friday condemned the operations, saying in a statement that it “deplores” the “forced returns.”

While many of the refugees who were forcibly repatriated had been initially refused asylum by the Ugandan government, United Nations officials said many of them were in the middle of the asylum process and should not have been sent back.