Sudanese migrants shot trying to cross Egyptian-Israeli border

Feb 12, 2009, 12:05 GMT

Cairo - Egyptian border guards on Thursday shot two Sudanese migrants and detained a third attempting to cross Egypt's border with Israel illegally, a security source told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said that border guards intercepted the three as they attempted to cross the Egyptian-Israeli border near the village of Shabana, south of Rafah.

When the three did not stop, he said, guards opened fire, hitting a woman in the stomach and a man in his left shoulder. The third, a Sudanese man, then stopped, the security source said.

The three reportedly told Egyptian interrogators that they were attempting to cross into Israel to look for work, and that they had paid 'international smuggling gangs' 5,000 US dollars to help them cross the border.

Authorities brought all three to a hospital in north Sinai town of al-Arish and notified the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo.

A spokesman for the Sudanese embassy could not immediately be reached for comment.

Since the beginning of 2008, Egyptian security forces have detained roughly 480 migrants, 129 of them from Sudan, attempting to cross Egypt's with Israel.

In November, the New York-based pressure group Human Rights Watch estimated that more than 13,000 migrants had crossed the Sinai border with Israel since 2006.