( dpa ) - Egypt has warned the Islamic militant group Hamas Tuesday of causing any further provocations on the Gaza border a day after clashes between Palestinians and Egyptian border police erupted.
"It is important that the Hamas leadership in Gaza adopts wisdom so as to discourage Palestinian masses from going close to the border with Egypt," the country's foreign minister, Ahmed Abul-Gheit, said.
Speaking after talks with his Spanish counterpart, the minister said Egypt would not accept any further provocations.
" Egypt is generous and patient but its patience has limits," he noted commenting on clashes, which erupted Monday between Palestinian stone-throwers and Egyptian border police. One Palestinian was killed and 24 Egyptians were injured in the clashes.
Egypt was mulling proposals to run its border on the basis of the 2005 agreement, the minister said.
"We have to know that Hamas' control of Gaza contradicts the border agreement and the legal status of the Palestinian Authority and Egyptian recognition of the authority," Abul-Gheit noted.
Earlier, Egypt sent reinforcements to its border with the Gaza Strip, security sources said, after a Palestinian suicide bombing in the southern Israeli town of Dimona.
Some 200 extra troops were sent to the 10-kilometre-long border with Gaza Monday, officials at Egypt's Northern Sinai Police Department told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Some 1,500 members of Egypt's Central Security Force were now deployed at the border, London's Arabic al-Hayat daily reported earlier.
In a statement published Tuesday, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza demanded an investigation into the death on the border and said the incident proved an arrangement must be found "quickly" for the formal reopening of the border.
But al-Hayat quoted Egyptian officials as saying Egypt would not accept an arrangement whereby Hamas security forces would guard the Rafah border passage, as Cairo recognizes the Ramallah-based "caretaker" government of President Mahmoud Abbas as the only legitimate Palestinian regime.
Hamas demands a role in running the passage, bypassing an international agreement from November 2005, which stipulated Abbas' Presidential Guard, Egyptian authorities and European observers would man the border passage, while Israel would observe security procedures at Rafah via video monitoring.
Hamas militants blew holes in the border on January 23, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to circumvent a tight Israeli blockade and stock up on supplies in Egypt.
The border remained breached for almost 12 days, and Israel fears Palestinian militants exploited the opportunity to infiltrate its own territory via Egypt.
Israeli media, meanwhile, reported that Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni wants to see the number of Egyptian forces along Israel's more than 200-kilometre-long border with Egypt doubled.
But the Israeli Defence Ministry and army strongly oppose this, fearing larger numbers of Egyptian troops could pose a security threat and set a "dangerous" precedent of reopening a peace treaty.
Israel's 1979 peace treaty with Egypt strictly limits the number of Egyptian troops allowed in the Sinai peninsula.