Egyptian Soldier Mohamed Salah Laid to Rest After Border Operation with Israel

After Israel handed over his body to Egypt, earlier today, Monday, the family of the Egyptian soldier, Mohamed Salah, who carried out the border operation that resulted in the killing and wounding of 5 Israeli soldiers, finished burying his body in his hometown in the Qalyubia Governorate, northern Egypt.

The burial ceremony took place in the presence of a very limited number of family members, in the family cemetery in the village of Al-Ammar in the Toukh district of Qalyubia governorate, amid the refusal of the relatives to make any statement to the local or Arab media.

This came after the name of the 23-year-old soldier, Mohamed Salah Ibrahim, was revealed, in addition to photos of him mostly taken from his Facebook account.

While the accounts of his friends who mourned him on his page confirmed that he did not have any political interests or religious affiliations, but rather all his hobbies were summarized by his love of travel, travel, photography and drawing.

He worked as a carpenter

According to the information, the dead soldier was staying with his family, consisting of his mother and two brothers, in an apartment in the Ain Shams area, east of Cairo, and he worked as an “alumetal technician” and a carpenter to support his family after his father’s death in a traffic accident.

It was also found that he did not complete his education and only obtained a preparatory certificate.

In addition, some comments from his Facebook account showed his love for Palestine. And he wrote in one of the posts, “God is with Palestine,” in response to a post by former US Vice President Mike Pence expressing his country’s support for Israel.

Mohamed Salah Ibrahim

This incident, which the borders between the two countries rarely witness, as it enjoyed relative calm, sometimes punctuated by gunfire as a result of the pursuit of drug smugglers and others, sparked a wave of criticism in Israel, especially through the local media, which considered it like a serious security breach.

While the Egyptian official version confirmed that the security man was chasing a number of drug smugglers, he crossed the Israeli border, and then an exchange of fire took place, killing him and 3 other Israeli soldiers.

For its part, the Israeli army opened a joint investigation with its Egyptian counterpart, and opened a separate investigation to find out how the soldier infiltrated the interior.

It is noteworthy that Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, and the borders between the two countries are often calm, but it witnessed repeated attempts to smuggle drugs, which led to live ammunition clashes in recent years between smugglers and Israeli soldiers stationed along the border.

However, in 2012, the “Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis” group claimed responsibility for an attack on the Egyptian-Israeli border, which resulted in the death of an Israeli soldier.