A joint Israeli army-police anti- smuggling patrol along the Egyptian border found a "powerful explosive device," hurled by a smuggler over the border fence overnight Monday.

"At daybreak we saw a black backpack laying on the (Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt)," said Maj. "M" of the special operations group of the army's engineering branch, in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

Israeli troops used a mobile, articulated robot equipped with a camera to remotely investigate the bag and found inside "several kilos of explosives packed with ball bearings, and remains of a cellphone-detonator, armed and ready for use from a distance against our forces," "M" told Xinhua.

Sappers have safely detonated the device, he said, adding that further investigation would be conducted in order to ascertain more details about who was behind the attempted attack.

Troops spotted the suspect earlier, who fled the scene before he was detained, and they did not find the unexploded device in the dark, according to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement sent to Xinhua. "M" said it was as yet unclear if the suspect was a Palestinian or Egyptian.

"We know that the area is heavily used for smuggling and infiltrations, and we are operating against the phenomenon nightly, " "M" said, adding that it was not the first time such kind of explosive devices had been seized.

"The smuggling routes along the Israel-Egypt border are constantly being used by terror organizations to execute terrorist attacks against the citizens of Israel and IDF soldiers," the IDF Spokesman's Office said, adding that "the operation prevented a terrorist attack against the State of Israel and its residents."

Officials told Army Radio that the device may have been intended for an attack within Israel, and not against soldiers.

"Refugees from Egypt are used by terror cells in the Sinai Peninsula (area in north Egypt) which are organized and financed by Hamas in Gaza," a senior Israeli army official said in a recent on-site briefing to the foreign press alongside a segment of the fence where the explosive device was uncovered.

Bedouin smugglers will eventually manage to breach the metal security barrier currently under construction along the border, the army official told reporters last Wednesday.

The official noted that most of the infiltrations into Israel are either being carried out or supported by Bedouin tribes in Israel and Egypt.

In August 2011, militants killed eight Israeli motorists and wounded 30 others in a cross-border attack along a nearby road. The army has since then deployed some of its crack infantry units to patrol the region and upped the number of early-warning installations.

The Israeli government in January 2010 approved the construction of a 240-km, 1.5-billion-shekel (400 million U.S. dollars) steel wall, and intended to thwart infiltrators, including job-seeking refugees, smugglers or hostile cross-border attackers.

Some 100 km of the barrier is already up, and officials expect to finish the work by the end of the year.