CAIRO, Nov. 23 (Aswat Masriya) –  Five Sudanese nationals were killed, six injured and five arrested when Egypt’s border guards thwarted an attempt to across Egypt’s North Eastern border into Israel, according to an army statement published on Facebook Monday.

The statement explained that border guards spotted on Monday at dawn a group of "Africans" moving from “the west to the east, in cooperation and under the supervision of criminal elements that facilitate illegal immigration”.

Egypt shares its eastern borders with Israel.

The border guards fired warning shots and headed to arrest the immigrants, who "initiated firing at security forces" and injured a soldier. The post was accompanied by a zoom-in picture of the unidentified shot soldier's exit wound.

The injured have been hospitalized and the case was referred to investigation.

Earlier in November, 15 Sudanese migrants were killed and eight were injured when they were caught up in the crossfire of a gun battle between Egyptian security forces and Bedouin smugglers while attempting to illegally enter Israel from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, according to a report by the Associated Press, citing security and hospital officials. 

There was no official statement on the incident.

The UN Human Rights council called on Egyptian authorities last year to “investigate and prosecute traffickers for kidnapping, torturing, and killing refugees in the Sinai Peninsula”.

According to a report released in February 2014 by Human Rights Watch, there was "collusion of Sudanese and Egyptian security forces with the traffickers." The report was based on dozens of interviews with victims and two traffickers.  

But the long journey which takes the migrants, some of them seeking asylum from conflict-ridden countries, to Egypt's Sinai and finally to Israel, often ends badly. 

The Israeli state does not welcome migrants and has taken several measures to stop their influx.

In January 2012, Israel passed a law that allows the "automatic detention" of anyone who enters the country without permission, including asylum seekers, Amnesty International criticized in a statement after the Israeli parliament passed the law. 

The watchdog said the law was aimed "at those entering via the Egyptian border."

Then-deputy director for MENA at Amnesty Ann Harrison, said "Israel has the right to protect its borders, but it does not have the right to abandon its international human rights obligations to asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants, or to criminalize them as 'infiltrators', which only fuels xenophobia and discrimination."

More recently, in December 2013, Israel completed the construction of a barrier along the Egyptian-Israeli border to block migrants' access to Israel through Egypt.