(AKI) - Israel's defence minister Amir Peretz is reported to be studying a plan to build by the end of this year a 14 kilometre wall in the Sinai desert along the border with Egypt, according to the Moheet Arabic website. The planned security fence is reported to be in response to a series of suicide bombings, the most recent of which in January killed 3 people and injured 7 others in the southern Israeli coastal town of Eilat. The Israeli authorities believe the Eilat suicide bombers slipped across the border with Egypt to enter the Jewish state. The Egyptian authorities say they have confiscated caches of arms and explosives near the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt since the January attacks. The Israeli government, however, has asked its neighbour to step up its efforts to safeguard security along the border. Peretz told journalists on Thursday that "every option that may guarantee the safety of Isreali citizens will be considered."
The Egyptian authorities have always denied past reports that such a security barrier is being mooted. If the Israeli authorities confirm plans to build such a wall, this could further stoke recent tensions between the two countries that have flared up over a documentary purporting to show unarmed Egyptian soldiers being killed by Israeli troops at the end of the 1967 Six-Day War.