At least 10 people were hurt when gunmen attacked two buses on a road near the Egyptian border in southern Israel, sparking a heavy gun battle with security forces and reports of several deaths.
Israel’s Channel 10 television said there were “several dead” in the attacks, but it was not immediately clear how many people were killed or if the attackers were among them. There were also unconfirmed reports on Israel’s main television stations that an anti-tank missile was fired across the border from Egypt. Security sources said the first attack saw an unknown number of gunmen in a car open fire on a bus which was travelling to the southern Red Sea resort town of Eilat, injuring five people, most of them lightly. The gunmen fled and shortly afterwards, Israeli television and radio stations reported a second attack on another bus further up the same road, with medics saying another five people had been hurt. Shortly afterwards, Israeli media reported that troops were engaged in a gun battle with the suspected perpetrators of the two attacks at a location near the border. Kobi Arad, a doctor at Eilat’s Yoseftal hospital said 10 people had been injured in the two attacks, one of them seriously and nine who were only lightly wounded.
