Three Israeli soldiers were shot and killed by an Egyptian security official, Israeli and Egyptian authorities said Saturday, in the worst incident on the border between the two countries in more than a decade.
Egypt was the first Arab country to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 1979, and the border has remained relatively quiet since a series of armed attacks in 2011 and 2012, despite frequent Israeli military operations in the area to thwart smugglers.
Saturday’s fighting began around 6:30 a.m. local time when Egyptian police shot and killed two Israeli soldiers at a military post on the border in the Negev Desert, according to the Israeli military. Their bodies were discovered after they failed to respond to a radio communication from a senior officer.
Israeli forces searched the area and located the attackers on Israeli soil around noon, the military said. A gun battle ensued in which a third Israeli soldier and the attacker were killed. Another Israeli soldier was wounded.
Three Israeli soldiers and an Egyptian border guard were killed in an ensuing firefight, the Egyptian military said, after one of its border guards crossed into Israel in pursuit of a drug dealer. The military expressed its condolences to the families of the victims.
Israel said it was investigating the incident “in full cooperation with the Egyptian army” and that further searches were under way to “rule out the presence of any other attackers”.
“We have received no intelligence warning of this incident,” the Israeli military said.
“It’s good that the cooperation with the Egyptians is ongoing. We’ve been talking to them. It’s not about geopolitics.”
The incident came amid heightened tensions on Israel’s borders. Last month, its army engaged in a five-day firefight with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. In April, it conducted brief cross-border exchanges with militants in Gaza, southern Lebanon and Syria.
The Israeli military said Saturday’s first shooting – in which a male and a female Israeli soldier were killed – could be linked to an unsuccessful drug smuggling into Israel earlier in the morning.
The attempt was thwarted around 2:30 a.m. local time — about four hours before the first shooting — and Israeli forces seized drugs worth about 1.5 million shekels ($400,000).
A decade ago, Israel built a fence along its border with Egypt to prevent the arrival of African migrants and incursions by Islamic State militants operating in Egypt’s restive Sinai province.
The Israeli military said they were still trying to determine how the attackers managed to get past the border fence.