IDF soldier in 1967 war
Photo: GPO
'Witnesses': IDF killed Egyptian POWs
More accusations brought by Egyptian opposition paper say Israeli army killed unarmed troops in 1967 war
An Egyptian newspaper article claimed Thursday that IDF soldiers executed dozens of Egyptian prisoners of war during the 1967 Six Day War.
The independent opposition newspaper El-Dostor claims to have new evidence of what it described as "mass graves of Egyptian soldiers killed by IDF troops during the Six Day War".
The evidence includes videotaped testimonies by two Bedouin eyewitnesses and an Egyptian soldier about the deliberate killing that allegedly took place during the first two days of battle, June 5 and 6, 1967. The witnesses claim the troops were shot dead after laying down their weapons.
The testimonies have been combined to a short video shown on Youtube. In it a Bedouin from central Sinai, Sawilam Sleiman Muslam, describes what he saw.
"I was at the peak of a faraway mountain and I watched them. I saw a jeep equipped with a machine gun shoot the Egyptian soldiers after they surrendered, laid their weapons on the ground, and lifted their arms," he said. Egypt claims 45 soldiers were killed in this incident.
Another witness, Haj Salaman Sleiman Awada, recounted, "An Israeli army jeep saw a line of Egyptian soldiers and shot them with a machine gun. Then they picked up their weapons and continued on their way." The article claims central Sinai is littered with such mass graves.
"I saw with my own eyes the tanks run down my friends. They really ran them over, and I heard their bones cracking beneath the tanks. I thought to myself, 'Why are they doing this?' But I could do nothing. Everything was destroyed," Awada said.
The article concludes by making a demand to "prosecute the war criminals in Israel."
The paper's accusations were not new; reports of IDF soldiers shooting Egyptian POWs dead during the war have been heard before. El-Dostor is an opposition paper, which means its views do not represent those of the government.
The paper's editor has even been tried in court for "demoralization" and the fall of Egypt's stock market after claiming that the government was hiding the truth about President Hosni Mubarak's health problems.
