AFP
Thu Feb 4, 12:06 pm ET
EL-ARISH, Egypt (AFP) – Egyptian police shot dead two migrants near the border with Israel, bringing to five the number of Africans killed on the frontier this year, a security official said on Thursday.
He said police shot the two migrants in separate incidents on Wednesday night and Thursday morning after they refused orders to stop.
The nationality of the migrant killed on Wednesday was not immediately known. Another migrant was wounded in that shooting and taken to hospital.
The 27-year-old migrant killed on Thursday was Eritrean.
Egyptian border guards often shoot at African migrants who pay smugglers for passage into Israel.
Police killed at least 19 migrants along the border last year. The people, many of them from Eritrea, Ethiopia or Sudan, say they want to escape poverty and discrimination in Egypt.
Israel has insisted that Egypt clamp down on the traffic, and has approved construction of barriers along the two countries' 250-kilometre (155-mile) border.