Palestinians force their way into Egypt
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-16 21:33

Hundreds of Palestinians broke through Egyptian and Palestinian Authority lines on the Gaza border Friday, pouring into Egypt in defiance of government attempts to secure the frontier, the Associated Press reported.

Egyptian border guards place barbed wire to prevent people from crossing the border between the Rafah Refugee Camp in the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt Friday, Sept. 16, 2005. Israel and the Palestinian Authority have both said they fear al-Qaida terrorists will infiltrate into Gaza through the open Gaza-Egypt border, where Palestinians and Egyptians have been crossing largely unfettered since Israel withdrew from the area on Monday. [AP]

It was the second afternoon in a row that the crowd was able to overwhelm the measures imposed in the morning to restore order on the Gaza-Egypt border, the Palestinians' only outlet to the world that avoids Israel.

The surge started when Palestinians waiting to cross pelted their own security forces with stones at the Saladin gate, the main informal crossing on the border, in this border town. When the Palestinian security officials gave way, the crowd pushed through the iron gateway and tackled the Egyptian police.

Policemen tried to beat the crowd back with sticks, but they were overwhelmed, and hundreds of Palestinians entered Egypt.

Earlier Friday, Israel said the failure to control the flow of arms and people across the frontier had severely undermined the credibility of the Palestinian Authority.

"They look like they're running a system which has neither law nor order, neither organization nor authority," Amos Gilad of the Defense Ministry's diplomatic department told Israel Army Radio.

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