Seven other Egyptian security men were wounded.
“Egypt ... demands an urgent investigation into the reasons and circumstances surrounding the deaths,” the army said in a statement after a meeting of the ruling military council.
Thursday’s attack was a major test for ties between Israel and Egypt following the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak and strengthened forces hostile to the Jewish state. Israel expressed concern about security in the Sinai peninsula.
A Cabinet spokesman said the army-sponsored government of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf also planned to hold an emergency meeting later on Friday with members of the military council and the intelligence service to assess the situation in the region.
Dozens of Egyptians demonstrated outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo following Friday prayers, denouncing the border raid.
Presidential candidates Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabbahi also denounced the loss of Egyptian lives: “Israel must realize that the day when Egypt’s sons are killed without an appropriate and strong reaction are over,” Moussa told Reuters.
Israel said the assailants came from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip through Egypt’s Sinai region and it launched attacks in Gaza which killed several Palestinian fighters and others.
But Sinai governor Khaled Fouda dismissed Israeli government suggestions that Egypt’s new rulers were doing less to stop Palestinians: “We reject such statements and have increased security patrolling and checkpoints in Sinai,” he said.
Meanwhile, a Gaza resistance group on Friday denied killing Israelis the day before but Israel continued to hunt down its members, killing the sixth in 24 hours of air strikes on Gaza.
An Israeli airstrike on the northern Gaza Strip killed a member of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), which Israel blames for a deadly series of ambushes on its citizens along the Israel-Egypt border Thursday, the group said. It named him as Saber Abed, 25.
Another person was killed and three wounded in two earlier Israeli air raids on Friday, on the eastern edge of Gaza City.
The strikes raised to nine the total number of Gazans killed in the past 24 hours since Israel began raids in retaliation for the shooting attacks in the Negev Desert.
Israel killed five PRC members in a retaliatory airstrike on Thursday but a PRC spokesman said on Friday that it was not responsible for the Negev assaults.
In retaliation of the Israeli airstrikes, Gaza resistance fighters launched barrages of rockets deep into Israel.
On Friday, fighters in Gaza launched at least 17 rockets into Israel, the military said. One, aimed at the city of Ashkelon, was intercepted by the new Israeli anti-missile system known as Iron Dome. Another hit next to a synagogue in the port city of Ashdod and wounded six Israelis, according to Israeli emergency services.
Israel’s south has been equipped with early warning systems and bomb shelters over years of rocket fire from Gaza, and those measures have helped keep casualties low.
Also Friday, dozens of Palestinians trying to reach the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem for prayers during the holy month of Ramadan scuffled with police at one of the gates to the Old City. The police were allowing access only to older Muslims in a measure police said is meant to prevent unrest.
The officers used a water cannon to disperse the crowd and made several arrests, police said. No injuries were reported.
