A senior Egyptian official denied witness reports that Egyptian guards had shot dead a Palestinian man on the Egypt-Gaza border after the Israeli army quit the area on Monday.

"The reports are inaccurate," said the official, who declined to be identified.

According to witnesses, Nafez Attiyeh, 34, was shot dead while another man wounded earlier in the day by Egyptian border guards.

The incident happened when the Egyptian border police were trying to rein in chaos as crowds swarmed the Rafah border crossing, witnesses said.

The Israeli army completed withdrawal from the coastal strip early Monday, ending 38 years of occupation in the Gaza Strip, which, along with the West Bank, was captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Under an Egyptian-Israeli deal, Egypt started Saturday deploying the first batch of 750 border police on the Egypt-Gaza border to replace Israeli troops trying to curb arms smuggling into Gaza.

Source: Xinhua