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A breached emergency gate at Israel’s southern border with Egypt that was held closed solely with plastic handcuffs; the passage of hours earlier than two Israeli troopers’ our bodies had been found; and the botched pursuit of an infiltrator that led to the dying of a 3rd soldier.
On Sunday, a day after three Israeli troopers had been killed at Israel’s largely peaceable border with Egypt, the Israeli authorities had been inspecting a sequence of failures and mishaps that allowed a lone suspect recognized by each the Israeli and Egyptian authorities as a member of the Egyptian safety forces to cross the closely fortified boundary undetected, spend a number of hours inside Israeli territory and kill three Israeli troopers in two separate areas earlier than being encircled and fatally shot.
And as Israel ready on Sunday to bury the three troopers, analysts had been elevating painful questions in regards to the obvious blunders concerned.
Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty greater than 40 years in the past, and the Israeli troops patrolling the border are extra used to coping with drug-smuggling gangs than with armed militants. The episode on Saturday was the primary of its sort alongside the Egyptian border in additional than a decade.
In line with the Israeli navy, troops remained deployed alongside the border early Saturday after a significant cross-border drug smuggling try was foiled and a haul value about $400,000 was seized at 3 a.m. The models deployed within the space repeatedly thwart such smuggling efforts, the navy stated, typically utilizing reside hearth.
The final contact made with two Israeli troopers — a person and lady — holding one of many positions alongside the border was at 4:15 a.m., Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli navy’s chief spokesman, informed Kan, Israel’s public radio, on Sunday. The pair started their 12-hour shift at 9 p.m. on Friday.
Radio contact is meant to be made on an hourly foundation, however this didn’t occur, he stated. Solely at 9 a.m. on Saturday did a commander arrive on the place to verify on the pair, discover them lifeless and lift the alarm about an assailant on the unfastened, Admiral Hagari stated.
Forces and trackers despatched in pursuit had been aided by a drone that noticed a suspicious determine within the sand a few mile from the border, inside Israeli territory, round midday.
However Admiral Hagari stated that the drone pictures didn’t clearly present a weapon, and that the troops wanted to get nearer to make sure that the determine was not an Israeli civilian who might have been mountaineering within the space. Because the troops closed in, the particular person opened hearth from a distance of about 200 yards, fatally capturing a 3rd Israeli soldier and wounding a fourth earlier than being killed himself.
His id and motivation remained unclear on Sunday. The Israeli information media reported {that a} Quran was present in his bag, suggesting a attainable Islamist hyperlink, however any affiliation with a militant group was not instantly identified.
Among the many different questions that remained to be investigated, Admiral Hagari stated, was why an emergency gate within the metal fence alongside the border, by way of which the suspect entered Israel, had no correct lock however was held closed solely by plastic hand restraints; why sensors alongside the fence didn’t detect the breach; and the way he managed to succeed in the military place and shock the troopers with out being noticed by lookouts.
Typically, Admiral Hagari stated, the techniques will be affected by climate situations.
“The Israeli defenses collapsed yesterday,” Yossi Yehoshua, a navy affairs commentator, wrote on Sunday within the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Ahronot. On condition that the Israeli navy “loved actual superiority when it comes to manpower, daylight visibility situations and auxiliary troops,” he wrote, the pursuit ought to have ended with out Israeli casualties.
Different analysts questioned whether or not troops stationed alongside the border might be anticipated to stay alert for 12-hour shifts within the warmth of the desert.
The Egyptian Military publicly provided a distinct model of the occasion on Saturday, saying in a press release that at daybreak on that day, a member of its safety forces had breached the safety fence whereas chasing drug smugglers and had exchanged hearth that led to the deaths of three Israeli troopers and the wounding of two others in addition to the dying of the Egyptian officer himself.
The Egyptian assertion didn’t account for the hours between the smuggling try and the shootings that the Israeli navy outlined.
Admiral Hagari stated the Israeli navy had been in contact with Egyptian officers from about 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, within the spirit of their strategic alliance.
Although many Egyptians are sad with the peace treaty with Israel, Israeli and Egyptian authorities have coordinated intently alongside the border lately, significantly because the rise of an Islamic State affiliate within the huge deserts of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
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