Israel apologised to Egypt on Thursday after its soldiers fired across the border and killed three Egyptian policemen.
Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Prime Minister, called Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s President, and expressed his ”deepest apologies” for the incident and promised a quick investigation.
Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egypt’s Foreign Minister, said: ”Egypt condemns and strongly protests this regrettable incident. We demand that the Israeli authorities conduct an immediate, thorough and comprehensive investigation into the circumstances that led to this incident, and present an explanation.”
The policemen were killed on the Egyptian side of the border near Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces operate on a narrow corridor along the border, often used by weapons smugglers, and come under fire from Palestinian militants. Soldiers fire at anything that raises their suspicions, and often kill civilians.
The Israeli army said that in the early hours of Thursday, soldiers identified three people approaching the border whom they believed to be planting a bomb. They opened fire but did not report hitting them.
It later emerged they were Egyptian policemen on their side of the frontier.
The investigation that has been ordered is one of a series into the conduct of soldiers in Gaza.
The army is also examining claims that soldiers desecrated the body of a Palestinian and then posed for photographs with it.
A number of allegations are due to be published on Friday in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. In one incident, an unnamed soldier said he and other troops ”played like Lego” with the remains of a suicide bomber who had exploded at a checkpoint, killing only himself.
In another incident, an unnamed soldier described how the body of an unarmed Palestinian killed in Gaza was brought to an army outpost and soldiers posed with the body, taking souvenir pictures and giving him the nickname ”Inny” for innocent civilian.
An army spokesperson said: ”The incidents noted have been checked and it was found that some are inaccurate and others wrong. One of the incidents is known and is being investigated.”
The army is also investigating an incident last year in which soldiers are suspected of desecrating the body of a Palestinian near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip.
In a separate inquiry, investigators have requested permission to exhume the body of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl shot repeatedly last month.
Soldiers fired at the girl, Iman al-Hams, as she approached a military observation post near the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on October 5.
The soldiers said they thought she was planting a bomb. The girl’s family said she was on her way to school at the time.
Soldiers from the unit later told Israeli media that an officer walked up to the girl after she was hit and riddled her bleeding body with a burst of automatic fire.
It is not known whether the girl was already dead when he shot her.
Palestinian hospital officials said she was shot at least 15 times, mostly in the upper body.
Prosecutors want to examine the body to determine the range from which she was shot and the type of bullets used. But the family has so far refused the request. Autopsies are forbidden under Islamic law.
Ahmed Hams, the girl’s uncle, said the military wanted to use an autopsy to clear the officer.
”She has been laid to rest,” he said. ”We are not going to open her grave for some cosmetic investigation, because nothing is going to bring her back to life.”
Hundreds of Palestinian children and teenagers have been killed by army fire in the past four years, often in clashes between stone throwers and Israeli troops. The army rarely investigates the incidents.
A tunnel used by Palestinian weapons smugglers along the Egyptian border collapsed yesterday, burying at least three people inside, Palestinian and Israeli military sources said. Three people were later rescued. – Guardian Unlimited Â