Cairo asks Tel Aviv for clarification on killing of Egyptian soldiers in 1967 war

Egypt has asked the Israeli authorities to provide clarification and more information about an incident involving the killing of 80 Egyptian military personnel, including 20 forces burned alive, during the Six-Day War in 1967 in West Jerusalem.

Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Ahmed Hafez said in a statement that the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv was tasked to contact the Israeli authorities to investigate and clarify the credibility of this incident.

He also called for providing the Egyptian authorities with more information urgently.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi on Sunday talked on a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid about the Israeli media reports regarding a mass grave of Egyptian military personnel in West Jerusalem during the 1967 war, said the Israeli Prime Minister’s spokesperson for Arab media, Ofir Gendelman, in a statement.

Lapid told President Sisi that he has tasked the Israeli Prime Minister's military secretary, Maj.-Gen. Avi Gil to thoroughly investigate this case and then update the Egyptian authorities on the related development, Gendelman added, noting that the talks between the two leaders touched on the upcoming Arab-US summit due to convene in Jeddah in mid-July.

It has been reported by Israeli newspapers that 20 Egyptian soldiers were burned alive 55 years ago by Israeli soldiers during the 1967 war (July 5-10) between Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan and Syria) and Israel, according to declassified Israeli files released on the 55th anniversary of the war.

It was also revealed that 80 Egyptian soldiers, including the 20 burned alive, were killed and buried in an unmarked mass grave by the Israeli forces in Kibbutz Nachshon of Latrun, located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Israeli writer Yossi Melman was told by a former Israeli commander who was serving in Kibbutz Nachshon that the 20 soldiers were killed alive in a bushfire in the Kibbutz, noting that the Israeli occupiers at that time dug an area for the mass grave after they looted all the Egyptian soldiers’ belongings.

Haaretz newspaper said that the mass grave is now part of the Mini Israel park.

In August 1995, some historians reported that the Israeli soldiers killed hundreds of Egyptian forces during the Six-Day War in 1967, according to AP. It was reported that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and former Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan were involved in the mass killing.

AP also reported that Israeli military historian Aryeh Yitzhaki, who worked in the Israeli army’s history department, said that mass killings were committed by the Israeli soldiers against the Egyptian forces during the war, during which thousands of Egyptian military personnel were killed. He also said that three Egyptian prisoners of war were stabbed to death.

The total number of the Egyptian military forces that were killed or went missing during the war was estimated at 13,600 forces, including 3,799 prisoners (481 officers and 3,280 soldiers and civilians) who managed to return, according to former Defense Minister and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Mohamed Fawzi, as quoted by Egypt’s state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper.

Meanwhile, it was estimated that the number of missing Egyptian forces reached 9,800, whom the country considered alive until they were declared martyrs in 1971, Al-Ahram said.

The war is known in Egypt as “Naksa,” meaning “setback”, as the army had suffered quite a heavy loss after about 80 percent of the air army was destroyed by Israeli strikes. Egypt’s grave loss, besides the human causalities, included losing the Sinai Peninsula. However, over three years of the War of Attrition (1967-1970), the Egyptian army was rebuilt, and Egypt managed to reclaim the peninsula during the 1973 war and then via international arbitration.