Egyptian Army soldiers in Sinai peninsula, By the Egyptian Ministry of Defense.
The Egyptian military said that a policeman who killed three Israeli soldiers along the border between the two countries on June 3 was pursuing a drug smuggler.
In a statement, a spokesman for the military said that “a member of the security forces breached the border security barrier” while in pursuit of the smugglers, leading to the death of three Israeli soldiers and injuries to two others.
The Egyptian security personnel was killed in the exchange of fire, the spokesman added, without providing any further details.
Earlier, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said that two soldiers, a male and female, were shot dead near the Egyptian border, and the third during an exchange of fire with the attacker in the area of the Paran Regional Brigade. The military later confirmed that the attacker was an Egyptian policeman.
“An investigation is being conducted in full cooperation with the Egyptian army,” the IDF said in a statement, adding that soldiers were searching the area to “rule out the presence of any additional assailants”.
Arab observers speculated that the Egyptian policeman carried out the attack on his own for ideological or religious reasons.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, reclaiming the Sinai Peninsula and ending decades of war as a result.
The border between the two countries experienced a number of security incidents in the past. In 2011, gunmen who came from Sinai killed eight Israelis in an ambush north of Eilat. Pursuing IDF forces killed seven attackers and five Egyptian police. In 2012, three gunmen who infiltrated from the peninsula were killed, as well as an Israeli soldier, in clashes along the border line.
Later in 2014, two Israeli soldiers were wounded by gunmen who fired an anti-tank weapon from Sinai during a drug smuggling attempt. And in 2015, rockets fired from Sinai hit southern Israel. ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack, which didn’t result in any casualties.
