Egypt Calls on Israel to Clarify Truth over Mass Burning, Burial of Egyptian Soldiers

On Sunday, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs assigned the country's embassy in Tel Aviv to communicate with the Israeli authorities over what is being circulated that at least 20 Egyptian soldiers were burned alive and buried in an unmarked mass grave during the Six-Day War.

In a statement, the spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, Ahmed Hafez urged the Egyptian embassy to open an urgent probe and inform the Egyptian authorities of the outcomes of the incident.

In a thread on Twitter, Israeli journalist Yossi Melman revealed the details of an incident in the 1967 War, in which, according to his account, at least 20 Egyptian soldiers were burned alive and buried in a mass grave by soldiers from the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).

The tweets, which Melman published on 8 July, cite files that saw the light after 55 years of being classified, and the story “hushed up” by the IDF. While he puts the figure at a minimum of 20, other sources – including a report from Israeli newspaper Haaretz – estimate a number as high as 80 unidentified, unmarked, buried casualties.

Melman details that the massacre took place in a no-man’s land in the West Bank, where two Egyptian battalions were deployed to raid the city of Lod and nearby airfields. After an exchange of gunfire between the Egyptian soldiers and the IDF along with members of the Nahshon Kibbutz, a communal settlement in the area, where a number of Egyptian soldiers were captured. Subsequently, the IDF set fire to wild bushes, which in the dry and hot weather of the time spread rapidly, giving the soldiers “no chance to escape”.

Following the live burning of the Egyptian soldiers, IDF soldiers came to the scene with bulldozers, constructing a mass grave in which they threw the bodies of the Egyptian soldiers without marking the grave.

Today, a park by the name of ‘Mini Israel’ is built over the site of the atrocity.