CAIRO, June 2: Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Egyptian policemen who strayed over their common border on Friday, days before a key meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Hosni Mubarak.

“This morning the bodies of two policemen with the force assigned to guard the international border in Sinai were found 200 metres across the international line,” the Egyptian interior ministry said.

It added that the men, who it identified in a statement as Mohammed Badawi Mohammed Sadiq and Ayman al-Said Hamid, ‘had been shot’, saying that their ‘weapons and equipment were with them’ when the bodies were recovered.

The ministry said an investigation was under way to determine the circumstances of their deaths.

Earlier, a security source said that the men, initially identified as soldiers, had mistakenly strayed across the border during a patrol.

“They lost their way and crossed onto the Israeli side by mistake,” the source said.

Mr Olmert will hold his first summit with an Arab head of state on Sunday when he meets Mr Mubarak at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, with deaths of the Egyptian policemen at the hands of Israeli soldiers likely now to be a major issue.

Israeli military sources confirmed that the two dead were Egyptians and insisted they had opened fire first on an Israeli patrol before fire was returned.

Army radio said Defence Minister Amir Peretz had ordered an investigation into the circumstances of the killings.—AFP