Egypt police kill Sudanese trying to cross into Israel

February 19, 2008 (ISMAILIA, Egypt) — Egyptian border police shot dead a Sudanese man Tuesday and arrested eight other foreigners trying to cross illegally into Israel, security and hospital officials said.

Sinai is the main route for traffickers trying to take mainly African migrants into the Jewish state for work or asylum.

The Sudanese man, Armenary Sinat, broke away from the pack and ran toward the border’s barbed wire fence, when the Egyptian guards opened fire and killed him, the security official said.

Sinat, 50, died from bullet wounds to the neck and right shoulder, said Imad Kharboush, head of the emergency unit at el-Arish hospital, where the victim’s body was transferred. Kharboush said he received an order from a military prosecutor to carry out an autopsy.

Police also detained a Nepalese man and woman, two Eritreans and four Chinese also trying to cross into Israel illegally, the officials said.

Police fatally shot an Eritrean woman on the border last week and detained her two daughters.

(ST)