Ras Sedr massacre

Overview

The Ras Sedr massacre refers to the killing of at least 52 Egyptian prisoners of war shortly after an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) paratrooper unit captured the town of Ras Sedr in the Sinai Peninsula on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. According to reporting on the case, the surrendered Egyptian unit was killed by the paratroopers who had taken the position.

Discovery and reporting

The killings did not become widely known until decades later. In June 2000, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd reported that a mass grave had been discovered at Ras Sedr containing the remains of 52 prisoners said to have been killed by Israeli paratroopers during the war. The report noted that some of the skulls bore bullet holes, which was described as an indication of execution. Initial reporting on the matter in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz was censored.

In April 2009, Haaretz reported that Israeli television director Ram Loevy had learned of the massacre shortly after the war from fellow paratroopers in his unit, and that after testifying about it in Metzah he was removed from the unit. Separately, another account described two distinct episodes of killings at the same location, said to have occurred in 1956 and 1967 respectively. Reporting has also described confessions by Israeli officers who said they witnessed the killings, including an account that the Ras Sedr massacre was one of three collective massacres said to have been carried out under the direction of a reserve brigadier-general, identified in reporting as Arieh Biroh (also spelled Arye Biro), spanning the 1956 Suez Crisis and the 1967 Six-Day War. The other two incidents referenced were killings at a quarry near the Mitla Pass in Sinai and the killing of escaping Egyptian officers by the 890 regiment at Sharm El-Sheikh. According to the reporting, after his retirement Biroh admitted in interviews to killing 49 Egyptian prisoners of war in the Sinai.

Same-day events elsewhere in Sinai

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has alleged that, earlier the same day, IDF forces killed hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war or wounded soldiers elsewhere in the Sinai Peninsula, near El Arish. Survivors alleged that around 400 wounded Egyptian soldiers were buried alive outside the captured El Arish International Airport, and that 150 prisoners in the Sinai mountains were run over by Israeli tanks.

Legacy

It has been suggested that the Ras Sedr massacre may have contributed to the retaliatory killing of dozens of Israeli prisoners of war by Egyptian forces during the 1973 Yom Kippur War; remains of bodies in IDF uniform bearing POW tags were later found in the ruins of the Bar Lev Line. The suppressed memory of the massacre also formed the basis for the plot of Batya Gur's crime novel "Murder in Jerusalem," reportedly developed in collaboration with Ram Loevy.