CAIRO, (Reuters) – Egypt withdrew its ambassador from Israel today, saying that the killing of five Egyptian security personnel as Israeli forces pursued cross-border raiders was a breach of its 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state.
The violence, following attacks inside Israel which killed eight Israelis, has sparked the gravest crisis in Israeli-Egyptian ties since Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow in February.
Egypt “lays on Israel the political and legal responsibility for this incident, which constitutes a breach of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel”, the cabinet said in an official online statement.
The official news agency MENA said the Egyptian death toll in Thursday’s violence had risen to five after two of seven wounded security personnel died of their injuries.
A few hundred Egyptians kept up a protest at the Israeli embassy in Cairo that began on Friday night, when they burned Israeli flags and tore down metal barriers. Banging on the barriers, they demanded the expulsion of the Israeli envoy.
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