Earlier this month, at least two Egyptian soldiers (some reports claim three) were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in a clash along the border between Egypt and Gaza. The event followed Israel’s occupation of the “Philadelphi Corridor” — a buffer zone between Egypt and Israel — days earlier, a move that is widely considered to be a violation of the 1979 peace accords between the two states.

The reaction of the Egyptian state has been restrained. Initial news of the killings did not come from the military but from an Israeli television channel and, in one of the three cases, from a Facebook post by the brother of the slain. The soldiers were not given a military funeral, and no military officials even attended the funerals that were held in the hometowns of the deceased.

The eventual statement made by the military on the event — a short post on social media — has since gone viral and infuriated many. In it, the military spokesperson attempts to camouflage the fact that it was the Egyptian military that came under attack and derisively describes one of the soldiers as “one of the elements tasked with securing [safeguarding]” rather than “soldiers” — a phrase that could imply anything from a member of a private security firm to a warehouse consultant. At the time of writing, the military has yet to comment on the death of the second soldier.