Three Israeli soldiers were shot dead today near the Egyptian border by an Egyptian “policeman”, who was also killed, the Israeli armed forces said, in a rare incident whose circumstances remain unclear.

The Egyptian army announced for its part that a “member of the security forces who was chasing drug smugglers” crossed a checkpoint between the two countries. According to the same source, an “exchange of fire with the Israeli security forces followed, which resulted in three deaths on the Israeli side.” The Egyptian was also killed in this conflict.

The Israeli armed forces had initially announced the death of two soldiers from the bullets of an “attacker” this morning near the border with Egypt.

The armed forces later announced that a third soldier had been killed in a midday shootout with an Egyptian “policeman” believed to have carried out the initial attack. Soldiers sought him out and killed him in a shootout, according to the Israeli military.

The first two soldiers killed had begun a guard shift yesterday, Friday night, at an Israeli army post in the border zone with Egypt, in the Negev desert, theater of repeated incidents linked to the smuggling of narcotics. Their bodies were found this morning, a military spokesman said.

An operation was immediately launched to find the suspect for the murders, who was located a few hours later in the same zone, in Israeli territory.

“At midday, during investigations, Israeli soldiers located the attacker on Israeli territory,” the armed forces said in a statement.

During the exchange of fire that followed, the attacker and an Israeli soldier were killed, the statement said.

Of the two soldiers killed in the initial attack, one was a woman, 19-year-old Leah Ben Noon, the Israeli military said. The Israeli army unit that patrols the Israeli-Egyptian border is mixed.

“An investigation is being conducted in full cooperation with the Egyptian army,” the text states.

The Israeli military has also launched an investigation to determine how the attacker managed to get past the several-meter-high fence along that border, a military spokesman said.

He added that there are still dark spots about the two incidents and about the attacker’s motives. Investigations are underway to determine whether other attackers managed to infiltrate Israeli territory, he said.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. However, drug smugglers operate along the border between the two countries, and in recent years there have been exchanges of fire between smugglers and Israeli soldiers stationed along the border.