The Israeli military said on Saturday that three of its soldiers were killed in live fire near the border with Egypt in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“Three IDF soldiers were killed today,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wrote on Twitter. “Two soldiers were killed by live fire near the border with Egypt, and the third during an exchange of fire with an assassin in the area of the Paran Regional Brigade.”
The IDF statement identified the killer as “an Egyptian policeman,” and said he was shot dead by troops.
“An investigation is being carried out in full cooperation with the Egyptian army,” the IDF said. Egyptian security sources also told news agencies that a joint investigation had been launched.
An Egyptian army spokesman confirmed that “a member of the security forces” was killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops.
A fourth Israeli soldier, a non-commissioned officer, received light injuries and was transferred to the hospital.
Connected to thwarting a drug smuggling operation?
Israeli army spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters that a major drug smuggling operation was foiled overnight at the Egyptian border. Contraband goods worth in the region of $400,000 (about €380,000) were seized.
But it was not immediately clear if or how these incidents were linked.
Hecht said two soldiers, a man and a woman, had been on watch all night in a remote desert area of the border and were found dead at their posts after failing to respond to their radios. He said that they may have been shot early in the morning.
When their bodies were found, a search began for a culprit, which led to an exchange of fire in which a third Israeli soldier and what was believed to be an Egyptian policeman were killed.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he conducted a situational assessment with the head of the IDF and that the military “will investigate the incident if necessary.”
Egypt’s border is relatively calm, although militant attacks are more common
Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979, and Egypt became an important strategic partner of Israel as one of its neighbors on relatively better terms. The government in Cairo also often acts as a mediator in the region, as it did last month in arranging a ceasefire in Gaza.
That said, peace remains tense and anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt is still widespread among ordinary people.
The border tends to be relatively quiet, although the presence of Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula has contributed to several deadly incidents in recent years.
In 2011, attackers from Sinai killed eight Israelis in a triple ambush north of Eilat. Israeli forces chased them and killed seven attackers and five Egyptian policemen.
In 2012, an Israeli soldier and three militants who had infiltrated from Sinai were killed in border clashes.
And in 2014, two Israeli soldiers on patrol were wounded by unidentified men who fired an anti-tank weapon from Sinai during a drug smuggling attempt.
The “Islamic State” group also claimed responsibility in 2015 for a series of rockets fired from Sinai that hit southern Israeli territory but did not cause major damage or injury.
msh/nm (AFP, AP, Reuters)