Four Palestinians were abducted on Wednesday evening in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula just minutes after passing Rafah Crossing.

Four Palestinians were abducted on Wednesday evening in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula just minutes after passing Rafah Crossing, the World Bulletin news website reported.

An eyewitness said that a number of masked armed men opened fire at a bus which was carrying the Palestinians, called four men by their names and abducted them.

The eyewitness said that there were fifty Palestinian passengers in the bus and insisted that there was no Egyptian security staff accompanying them.

Normally, Egyptian security staffs accompany travelers’ busses from the Rafah Crossing until Cairo Airport.

“Although the time of the daily night curfew has started,” the eyewitness said, “the Egyptians insisted that the bus must start its journey from Rafah to Cairo.”

Normally, Palestinian travelers’ buses do not move during the night curfew which has been imposed on  in Sinai Peninsula.

Spokesman of the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza Iyad al-Buzom said: “We are making urgent contacts with the highest levels of Egyptian authorities to follow up on the circumstances of what happened and we urge the Egyptian interior ministry to secure the lives of the kidnapped passengers and free them.”

One of the chief of a local tribe Salama abu-Rabaa said that a number of his tribe’s members saw the masked men, who abducted the Palestinians, while they were getting off an Egyptian armored vehicle in a place near to the place of the abduction.

He said that he has credible information about the four abductees and their whereabouts, insisting that they are in a military outpost near Al-Arish Sea.