Cairo – Sources quoted by the Egyptian media said, an Israeli delegation arrived in Cairo early Thursday morning in an attempt to find the remains of 22 soldiers who went missing during Israel’s wars in Egypt.
Of the 22 soldiers, 16 went missing during the Yom Kippur War, two during the War of Attrition and four during the Six Day War.
The sources said that the delegation arrived in a Jordanian plane from Amman. The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
The visit is the first of its kind since the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The last such visit took place in February 2010 and the current delegation is expected to renew its search for the soldiers’ place of burial in a few separate areas of Egypt.
The previous delegation’s searches focused on the Abu Atwa High School in the city of Ismailia which sits on the West Bank of the Suez Canal. During the Yom Kippur War, IDF forces advanced to the periphery of the city, and it is possible that body parts of Israeli soldiers are still buried there.
Nine Israeli soldiers who fought in the Yom Kippur War in the area of Ismailia are still missing.