Palestine

Gunshots from Egypt seriously wound Gaza truck driver

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Gunfire from Egypt has inflicted serious injury on a Palestinian truck driver in the Gaza Strip, medical sources say.

The young truck driver was hit by the gunshots while he was on his way to the southern border city of Rafah on Monday.

“A 27-year-old driver who was working at the Kerem Shalom crossing was seriously wounded on Monday morning by shots which were fired from the Egyptian side of the border,” said Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for Gaza’s health ministry.
The Israeli-controlled terminal of Kerem Shalom is the sole commercial crossing of Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli siege since 2007.

Gaza’s Interior Ministry condemned the shooting, demanding that the authorities in Egypt hold “an urgent inquiry.”

The source of the fire was not immediately clear. The incident, however, took place as persisting militancy continues to trouble Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula.

On May 1, the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas said it is taking extra security measures along the border between Egypt and the Gaza in an attempt to prevent insecurity both in the Palestinian enclave and on the Egyptian soil.

Since the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, in a military coup in July 2013, militants have launched terrorist attacks in the Sinai Peninsula, killing hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and police officers.

Egyptian army patrols a street in the divided border town of Rafah along the border with the Gaza Strip, on November 4, 2014. © AFP

A state of emergency has been declared in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula since a militant attack on an Egyptian army checkpoint killed more than 30 soldiers in October 2014.

In October 2014, the military-backed Egyptian administration created a buffer zone along its border with the coastal sliver.

Velayat Sinai militants, previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, have claimed responsibility for most of the attacks in the region. The group pledged allegiance to the ISIL terrorist group last November.

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