Al-Arish, Egypt  - A man smuggling African migrants across Egypt's border with Israel opened fire at an Egyptian border guard on Tuesday, seriously wounding him, police said.

Mustafa al-Hamshari, 22, was seriously wounded when a man caught smuggling African migrants across Egypt's border with Israel south of Rafah returned fire, a source in Egypt's security forces told German Press Agency dpa on condition of anonymity.

Al-Hamshari was taken to al-Arish hospital. The smuggler and the migrants he was transporting escaped across the border into Israel, police said.

Since the beginning of 2008, Egyptian security forces have detained roughly 480 migrants, 129 of them from Sudan, attempting to cross Egypt's border into Israel.

In November, the New York-based pressure group Human Rights Watch estimated that more than 13,000 migrants had crossed the Sinai border with Israel since 2006. (dpa)