EL-ARISH, Egypt: Authorities seriously injured two Turkish teenagers when they shot at them as they tried to cross the Egyptian border into Israel on Monday, security and medical officials said.
Police later arrested them, along with their father, the officials said. Three Sudanese refugees were also arrested Monday for allegedly trying to cross the border.
The twin 14-year-old teenagers and their father were trying to cross into Israel in search of jobs, said the security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The official said that this was the first time Egyptian authorities had arrested Turkish citizens at the border.
The two teenagers were taken to El-Arish hospital for treatment, said Imad Kharboush, who heads of the emergency unit at the hospital.
Earlier Monday, a Sudanese family including a 37-year-old mother, her 2-year-old son and her brother were also arrested south of the Rafah crossing passage as they tried to approach the barbered wire separating the two countries borders, the security official said.
The woman, who was a refugee from Sudan s war-torn Darfur region, told interrogators that she was trying to join the rest of her family in Israel and wanted to seek asylum at the UN office in Tel Aviv, the official said.
She paid human traffickers $500 (353 euros), slept overnight somewhere near the border area and hid in a small truck before she was smuggled to the border line, the official quoted her as saying.
In early July, Egyptian border guards shot dead a Sudanese refugee trying to sneak into Israel, alleging that he did not comply with orders to turn himself over to authorities. Later that month, border police shot and killed a Sudanese woman and seriously wounded four others under similar circumstances.
Israel estimates that 2,800 people have entered the country illegally through its border with Egypt in recent years, nearly all from Africa.
Many African refugees find life difficult in Egypt, a country that struggles to provide jobs and social services for a growing refugee population. Egyptian riot police violently cleared a refugee encampment in central Cairo in 2005, killing nearly 30 people. Associated Press
