Israeli drug smuggler was killed Sunday night, following an attempt to move drugs from Egypt into Israel which became a shootout between dozens of smugglers and Israeli undercover soldiers as well as Egyptian security forces. The Israeli Border Police reported that the undercover unit’s fighters, with assistance from the Negev Intelligence unit, thwarted a large smuggling operation on the border with Egypt.
The Israeli forces lay in ambush until it observed dozens of smugglers arriving from the Egyptian side at the border fence, placing ladders against the fence and beginning to dump to the Israeli side bags that contained very large quantities of drugs.
The Border Police also identified four vehicles moving from the Israeli side of the border towards the smuggling site. After a number of suspects got out of the vehicles and began to load the bags, the Israeli forces identified themselves with the aim of carrying out arrests.
The smugglers had positioned four armed squads to cover the operation, and as soon as the undercover soldiers of the Border Police identified themselves, those four squads opened fire, at which point the soldiers returned fire, joined by Egyptian security forces who targeted the smugglers on their side of the fence. One of the smugglers, an Israeli Bedouin from Bir Hadaj, was killed in the exchange, and his friends grabbed his body and dropped it outside the IDF Tze’elim base.
There were no casualties to the Israeli forces. A jeep with several dozen kilograms of drugs was captured near the area of the battle.
Border Police units continued to hunt for additional suspects.