A breached emergency gate at Israel’s southern border with Egypt that was held closed solely with plastic handcuffs; the passage of hours earlier than two Israeli troopers’ our bodies have been found; and the botched pursuit of an infiltrator that led to the demise of a 3rd soldier.

On Sunday, a day after three Israeli troopers have been killed at Israel’s largely peaceable border with Egypt, the Israeli authorities have been analyzing a sequence of failures and mishaps that allowed a lone suspect recognized by each the Israeli and Egyptian authorities as a member of the Egyptian safety forces to cross the closely fortified boundary undetected, spend a number of hours inside Israeli territory and kill three Israeli soldiers in two separate locations earlier than being encircled and fatally shot.

And as Israel ready on Sunday to bury the three troopers, analysts have been elevating painful questions concerning the obvious blunders concerned.

Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty greater than 40 years in the past, and the Israeli troops patrolling the border are extra used to coping with drug-smuggling gangs than with armed militants. The episode on Saturday was the primary of its type alongside the Egyptian border in additional than a decade.

According to the Israeli army, troops remained deployed alongside the border early Saturday after a serious cross-border drug smuggling try was foiled and a haul price about $400,000 was seized at 3 a.m. The models deployed within the space recurrently thwart such smuggling efforts, the army mentioned, usually utilizing dwell fireplace.

The final contact made with two Israeli troopers — a person and lady — holding one of many positions alongside the border, was at 4:15 a.m., Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army’s chief spokesman, advised Kan, Israel’s public radio, on Sunday. The pair started their 12-hour shift at 9 p.m. on Friday.

Radio contact is meant to be made on an hourly foundation, however this didn’t occur, he mentioned. Only at 9 a.m. on Saturday did a commander arrive on the place to test on the pair, discover them lifeless and lift the alarm about an assailant on the unfastened, Admiral Hagari mentioned.

Forces and trackers despatched in pursuit have been aided by a drone that noticed a suspicious determine within the sand a couple of mile from the border, inside Israeli territory, round midday.

But Admiral Hagari mentioned that the drone photographs didn’t clearly present a weapon, and that the troops wanted to get nearer to make sure that the determine was not an Israeli civilian who might have been mountain climbing within the space. As the troops closed in, the particular person opened fireplace from a distance of about 200 yards, fatally capturing a 3rd Israeli soldier and wounding a fourth earlier than being killed himself.

His id and motivation remained unclear on Sunday. The Israeli news media reported {that a} Quran was present in his bag, suggesting a doable Islamist hyperlink, however any affiliation with a militant group was not instantly identified.

Among the opposite questions that remained to be investigated, Admiral Hagari mentioned, was why an emergency gate within the metal fence alongside the border, by means of which the suspect entered Israel, had no correct lock however was held closed solely by plastic hand restraints; why sensors alongside the fence didn’t detect the breach; and the way he managed to achieve the military place and shock the troopers with out being noticed by lookouts.

Sometimes, Admiral Hagari mentioned, the programs could be affected by climate circumstances.

“The Israeli defenses collapsed yesterday,” Yossi Yehoshua, a army affairs commentator, wrote on Sunday within the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Ahronot. Given that the Israeli army “enjoyed real superiority in terms of manpower, daylight visibility conditions and auxiliary troops,” he wrote, the pursuit ought to have ended with out Israeli casualties.

Other analysts questioned whether or not troops stationed alongside the border might be anticipated to stay alert for 12-hour shifts within the warmth of the desert.

The Egyptian Army publicly supplied a unique model of the occasion on Saturday, saying in a press release that at daybreak on that day, a member of its safety forces had breached the safety fence whereas chasing drug smugglers and had exchanged fireplace that led to the deaths of three Israeli troopers and the wounding of two others in addition to the demise of the Egyptian officer himself.

The Egyptian assertion didn’t account for the hours between the smuggling try and the shootings that the Israeli army outlined.

Admiral Hagari mentioned the Israeli army had been in contact with Egyptian officers from about 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, within the spirit of their strategic alliance.

Though many Egyptians are sad with the peace treaty with Israel, Israeli and Egyptian authorities have coordinated carefully alongside the border in recent times, significantly because the rise of an Islamic State affiliate within the huge deserts of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Myra Noveck contributed reporting.