Aswan police kill four Eritreans near Sudan border

Four Eritreans have been killed and 10 others wounded in what was described as an exchange of gunfire with police forces from the Aswan Security Directorate, privately-owned newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported Thursday.

The Eritreans were trying to illegally enter Egypt through its southern border with Sudan, according to the newspaper.

The report said that police went to the border area, east of the Oweinat district, after receiving information that undocumented migrants were attempting to enter the country from Sudan.

An ambulance transported the injured to Aswan University Hospital while the bodies of the deceased were taken to the city morgue. The Eritrean Embassy in Cairo has been contacted by local authorities and is expected to claim the bodies for repatriation back to Eritrea.

For several years, Eritreans en route to hoped-for asylum in Israel or Europe have fallen victim to kidnappers and human traffickers operating in Sudan and the Sinai Peninsula.

Thousands of Eritreans leave their country every year, fleeing human rights abuses, including a state policy of using forced labor and compulsory and indefinite periods of military service.

A 2013 report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated that “the number of Eritreans crossing the border from Sinai to Israel has increased from 1,348 in 2006 to 17,175 in 2011.”

The report said that many refugees fall victim to extortion and torture by kidnappers and human traffickers. Eritreans have been kidnapped and held for ransom, sometimes as high as US$15,000, according to the UN study.

If the undocumented immigrants cannot raise the ransom money, they may be sold to another group in Sudan or taken to Sinai, where they are held, according to reports, in appalling conditions and subjected to torture.