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Guards open fire on migrants
17/03/2008 11:59 - (SA)
Ashraf Sweilam
El-Arish - Egyptian border guards opened fire on Monday and wounded a Sudanese man who was part of a group of five men trying to illegally cross into Israel just south of the Rafah border crossing point, said a security official said.
The four other Sudanese managed to get into Israel, the official said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, as he was not allowed to talk to the media.
Monday's shooting was the latest in a series of similar cross-border incidents. The security official said the Sudanese group ignored warning shots initially fired into the air and managed to cut through the barbed wire south of Rafah.
Chief physician Imad Kharboush at a North Sinai emergency unit said the wounded Sudanese, who had been identified as Abdullah Shukar Abdullah, 23, was undergoing surgery at El-Arish General Hospital for a bullet wound to the stomach.
Africans begin trickling into Israel
Abdullah, from Khartoum, reportedly told police that each of the five paid $500 to a smuggler to take them to the border area to cross into Israel, where they were hoping to find work, the official said.
The four who got into Israel were allegedly from Sudan's troubled western Darfur region, he added.
Dozens of African migrants had been detained over the past year as they tried to cross into Israel from the Sinai desert, and seven had been killed this year by Egyptian border guards.
The Africans began trickling into Israel in 2005, after neighbouring Egypt quashed a demonstration by a group of Sudanese refugees and in recent months, the number had surged as word spread of job opportunities in Israel.
Last year, Israel asked Egypt to do more to stem the tide. United Nations officials in Israel had said that more than 7 000 African migrants had entered the Jewish state illegally in just more than a year, including at least 2 000 since January.
- AP
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