JERUSALEM: Several people were killed when gunmen fired at Israeli vehicles near the Egyptian frontier on Thursday, Israeli TV said. The gunmen first ambushed a civilian bus and wounded at least seven people, the military said, on Israel's Highway 12, a desert road about 30 km (18 miles) north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat. The road passes within meters of the open frontier with Egypt. Israel television stations later said several other vehicles were ambushed and a number of people killed. Israeli officials have voiced concern that militant groups in the Sinai have been making use of a security vacuum left by the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in February. Worries over the attack sent the Israeli shekel down against the dollar and stocks dipped on Thursday. Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, recently stepped up security activity in the Sinai desert, which borders the Jewish state and the Gaza Strip. Egyptian security sources said on Tuesday that an army crackdown on armed groups in the northern Sinai had netted four Islamist militants as they prepared to blow up a gas pipeline. But after Thursday's attack, Egyptian security sources said on it was unlikely that the bus ambush had come from Egyptian territory. Security patrols on the Egyptian-Israeli border had not picked up on "suspicious movements" on the Egyptian side, a source said, adding that security had been heightened on the border after news of the attack. –Additional reporting by Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia, Egypt.
