Egypt police shoot Sudanese on Israel border
March 8, 2008 (ISMAILIA, Egypt) — Egyptian police shot a Sudanese man in the back on the Israeli border on Saturday when a group of illegal migrants ignored their orders to stop and made a run for Israel, Egyptian security and medical sources said.
Seven kilometers south of the Rafah crossing point, border guards opened fire at a group of three Sudanese, which included a woman, after they ignored shots fired into the air, said a security official, speaking on condition of customary condition of anonymity.
Zakariya Moussa Abdallah, 24, was shot in the back and remains in critical condition at the El-Arish hospital after an operation to remove the bullet, said Imad Kharboush, head of the North Sinai’s emergency unit.
The other four people in his group — a Sudanese married couple and two Eritreans — were caught and detained, the security sources added.
In a separate incident on the same border but further south, Egyptian police caught two Eritrean women, a Sudanese woman, two Ghanaian men and a man from Ivory Coast trying to enter Israel.
On Tuesday, a 50-year-old Sudanese man was shot dead while trying to cross into Israel south of the town of Rafah.
The Africans began trickling into Israel in 2005, after neighboring Egypt quashed a demonstration by a group of Sudanese refugees and in recent months, the number has surged as word spread of job opportunities in Israel.
More than 7,000 African migrants have entered the Jewish state illegally in just over a year, including at least 2,000 since January, according to U.N. officials in Israel.
The 250-kilometre (155-mile) Egyptian-Israeli border has become a favoured conduit fro African economic migrants seeking work in Israel. Egyptian police have shot several of them dead in the last few months.
(ST)
Information for this report provided by AF, AP and Reuters