CAIRO: Egyptian police shot dead a sub-Saharan African migrant and wounded another as they tried to enter Israel illegally, a security official said on Monday.
A police patrol spotted the two trying to slip into Israel north of the Karm Abu Salem border crossing late on Sunday.
Police opened fire after they refused orders to stop, the Egyptian official said.
The identity of the dead migrant was not immediately known. The wounded migrant, who was taken to hospital in the northern border town of Rafah, was a 29-year-old from Cameroon.
It was the second fatal shooting of a migrant reported this year along the porous border with Israel that has become a major transit route for migrants, asylum-seekers and drug smugglers.
The Israeli government has asked Cairo to clamp down on the flow of asylum seekers, who say they are fleeing poverty and discrimination in Egypt, and earlier this month approved the construction of barriers along its 250-km border with Egypt.
The policy of shooting migrants, 19 of whom were killed last year, has prompted harsh criticism of Egypt. None of the migrants killed was armed, although Bedouin smugglers who help them have opened fire on police. -AFP
