CAIRO, Sep 14 (Aswat Masriya) - Mexico condemned the killing of Mexican tourists in Egypt by Egyptian security forces, said the Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto Monday.

Security forces have "accidentally" killed a dozen Egyptian and Mexican tourists and injured 10 others on Sunday while chasing "terrorists" in al-Wahat area in the western desert, Egypt's Interior Ministry said in the early hours of Monday.  

The exact number of Mexican nationals killed and injured is yet to be known.

Nieto described the incident as “tragic” and demanded the government of Egypt to conduct “a thorough investigation of what happened.”

The ministry’s statement said that the joint forces accidentally targeted four vehicles which "turned out to belong to a Mexican tourist group."

The group was in a prohibited area, the ministry said.

It added that a team has been tasked with inspecting the causes and circumstances surrounding the incident, as well as reasons for the group's presence in the prohibited area.