Rights group: Egypt must stop shooting at migrants

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Egypt should stop shooting unarmed migrants as they try to sneak across the barbed wire border to Israel in a desperate journey that has gone from dangerous to deadly, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday in a new report. Since 2007, Egyptian border guards have killed at least 33 migrants, many from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region including a pregnant woman and a 7-year-old girl, the report said. Many more have been wounded in an apparent response by Egypt to international pressure that it doesn't do enough to secure its borders, it said. Those detained by Egypt guards at the border are put on trial in secret military courts and often denied access to the UN refugee agency in violation of international law, the 90-page report by the New York-based group added. The report also accused Israel of forcibly returning at least 139 African migrants back to Egypt, where they risk arrest and deportation.