A man identified by Israeli and Egyptian authorities as an Egyptian security officer entered Israeli territory on Saturday and killed three Israeli soldiers in two separate shootings in a remote desert area. along the border between the two countries, according to an initial Israeli investigation. army.
Many details remain hazy hours after the events took place, but Israeli military officials appear to regard the incident along the usually quiet border as a phishing attack and say the investigation is under way. conducted in cooperation with the Egyptian Army.
The Israeli and Egyptian armies offered different versions of the episode.
A spokesman for the Israeli military said the sequence of events began around 2:30 a.m. Saturday when Israeli soldiers thwarted a large cross-border drug smuggling plot, which involved ladders placed along the line. border fence. The spokesperson said they seized about $400,000 worth of goods.
Then, at around 8 a.m., when Israeli soldiers stationed at a border post did not answer their radio calls, a commander arrived on the scene and found the body of a male soldier. soldier and a female soldier, the spokesman said. They are said to have been killed an hour or two earlier.
The spokesman said more troops had arrived to conduct searches in the area and around midday they tracked down a suspect on Israeli territory. In a subsequent shootout, a third Israeli soldier was killed, as was the suspect, who was wearing the fatigues of Egyptian border guards. An Israeli non-commissioned officer was slightly injured in the gunfight.
The Egyptian military said in a statement that at dawn, a member of the security forces tasked with guarding the border broke through the security fence while pursuing drug traffickers. The military said he was involved in a gunfight that resulted in the death of three Israeli soldiers and the wounding of two others as well as the death of the Egyptian officer himself.
The Egyptian statement did not take into account the hours between the smuggling attempt and the shootings outlined by the Israeli military.
The Israeli military said the attacker’s link and motive were not clear at this time.
Although the desolate mountainous region has long been known for drug trafficking, deadly security incidents along Israel’s border with Egypt are much rarer, with the most recent major attacks having took place more than a decade ago.
In August 2011, eight Israelis were killed in a multi-pronged attack from across the Egyptian border near the Israeli resort of Eilat. In that episode, militants opened fire on an Israeli bus on a winding road along the border and, minutes later, detonated a bomb next to an Israeli army patrol. The militants then fired an anti-tank missile and hit a private vehicle, killing the passengers.
In the chaotic aftermath, Israeli forces killed three of the attackers who had infiltrated Israeli territory. Israeli security forces also killed 5 Egyptian officers who were pursuing the Egyptian attackers — bring Israel and Egypt to the brink of diplomatic crisis.
Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty more than 40 years ago and work closely along the border. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, said that Israeli and Egyptian liaison officers kept in regular contact and that they were in contact even as Saturday’s events were unfolding.
Vivian Yee contribution report from Cairo.
