Egypt foils drug smuggling on border with Israel

Egypt said on Tuesday it exchanged fire with drug smugglers on its border with Israel in the Sinai Peninsula, killing one of them and arresting six.

Israel said one of its soldiers was “slightly injured” in the same incident, which took place late on Monday to the south of the Al Awja border crossing.

Drugs weighing 174kg were confiscated, according to a statement by the Egyptian military spokesman posted on his official Facebook page.

Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army’s Arabic spokesman, put the number of the smugglers at 20 and said on X that an unspecified number were injured in the shooting.

The Al Awja crossing is where Israel inspects humanitarian aid destined for Gaza.

Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979 and have since co-operated on counterterrorism and combating human and drugs trafficking across their border.

The latest smuggling incident comes at a time when Egypt-Israel relations are fraught with tension over the Gaza war and Israel’s suggestion that it wants to control a corridor that runs along Egypt’s 13-kilometre border with Gaza, where Hamas has ruled since 2007.

Egypt has recently built a concrete wall alongside its border with Gaza together with a fence of barbed wire.