By Xinhua
Cairo : Egypt will never allow the incident of Rafah crossing along the Egyptian-Gaza border to happen again, Egyptian presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad said on Sunday.
In sympathy with the humanitarian suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Egypt chose to allow the massive flow of Gazans into the country in the past 11 days, Awad was quoted by the official MENA news agency as saying.
But Egypt “will not abandon its right, duty and responsibility to ensure such an incident is never repeated,” Awad said. For a sovereign state of Egypt, its border is not a prey to anyone and its soldiers are not to be attacked with stones, the spokesman said, referring to small scale clashes between Palestinians and Egyptian security forces in the just-ended border chaos.
Earlier in the morning, Egyptian security forces closed the last breach of the border fence along the frontier with Gaza, stopping the flow of Palestinians into the Egyptian side, a security source told Xinhua.
Egyptian forces on Sunday resealed the only remaining gap onthe Egyptian side of the border fence with barbed wire and metal barricades.
On Jan. 23, Hamas militants blew up the border wall separating Gaza and Egypt, allowing tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the poor isolated Gaza enclave to cross into Egypt for purchase of daily needs.