Egypt protest over 'POW deaths'

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Egyptian police have broken up a protest sparked by a documentary taken as proof that Israel killed Egyptian POWs during the 1967 war.

The protesters in the town of Al-Arish in the northern Sinai carried banners and chanted slogans denouncing Israel.

The Israeli director of the film - screened on Israeli TV earlier this month - said he mistakenly identified Palestinian war dead as Egyptians.

The Egyptian media had also grossly misrepresented the film, he said.

The point of the film, Spirit of Shaked, was to demonstrate that excessive force had not been used, Ron Edelist said.

An Israeli government minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, commanded the Shaked unit said by the film to be involved in the killings.

Earlier this month, he postponed a visit to Egypt because of the controversy.

The affair has dominated Egyptian headlines and sparked an angry debate in parliament. The foreign ministry summoned Israel's ambassador in Cairo for an explanation.

Israel captured the arid Sinai peninsula from Egypt in the Six Day war of 1967, with Egypt counterattacking in the 1973 war. The two sides signed a peace treaty in 1979 and Sinai was returned to Egypt.