Ismailia–Parliamentarians have expressed anger over an Israeli mission currently excavating under the Abu Atwa Girls School in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia with the stated aim of locating bodies of Israeli soldiers killed in past conflicts with Egypt.
MPs say they consider the operation a violation of Egyptian sovereignty. They urged President Hosni Mubarak to disallow it unless the Israeli government reciprocated by allowing Egyptian missions to search for slain Egyptian soldiers buried in mass graves in Israel during the 1967 war.
"We plan to submit an urgent interpellation on the issue next Monday," said MP Salah el-Sayegh, adding that the Egyptian security services were unjustifiably keeping the Israeli excavation project under wraps.
"The Egyptian government must be held to account for allowing this," said MP Sabri Khalaf, demanding that Israel provide maps of mass graves in Israel and the Sinai Peninsula and calling on the government to conduct its own searches for slain Egyptian soldiers.
MP Mahmoud Selim, for his part, threatened to stage a sit-in in front of the school in Ismailia if the digging was not halted immediately.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
