Landmine kills 2 Antiquities Ministry employees in Ismailia, robbers kill 2 more in Minya

In the past two days, four Antiquities Ministry employees were killed and two others were hospitalized in seperate incidents, when a buried landmine exploded in Ismailia, and armed robbers opened fire on security guards in Minya.

A wartime landmine in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia exploded on Sunday, killing two people and seriously injuring their colleague as they were conducting excavations at the Tel al-Dafna archaeological site. Referring to the deceased as the “ministry’s martyrs,” an Antiquities Ministry statement released Monday morning said all excavations in the area have been suspended.

While the statement did not specify the type of explosive device that detonated, the privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper reported it was a buried and long-forgotten landmine, citing unnamed medical sources.

Ismailia Governorate was a focal point in the Egypt-Israel wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973.

Ismailia's police chief also told the state-owned Al-Akhbar news site that a landmine detonated in the excavations, although the newspaper cited four casualties as opposed to the official two deaths. Prosecutors are currently conducting investigations at the explosion site.

Egypt has the world’s highest number of active landmines and unexploded weapons in the world, with an estimated total of 23 million explosive devices dating back to World War II buried in the Western Desert and around the Sinai Peninsula. Over the decades, thousands of Egyptians have been killed or maimed by landmines.

In a separate incident, on Saturday two Antiquities Ministry security guards were fatally shot by armed robbers attempting to plunder ancient artifacts at the Deir al-Barsha archaeological site in the central Minya Governorate, according to the ministry’s statement. A third ministry employee was wounded in the incident. The guards successfully prevented the robbers from looting the site before they died, the statement said.

The ministry said it would compensate the families of the deceased with LE10,000 each, and injured employees with LE5,000 each.