Two Israeli soldiers have been injured after their vehicle was fired on with an anti-tank missile and small arms from across the Egyptian border.

An Israeli military spokesman said the attack occurred in southern Negev desert near Ezuz and that the soldiers were evacuated to a hospital in Israel. “Two soldiers were injured by fire directed at them from Egypt,” a statement from the Israeli military added, without identifying the attackers.

The army said a female officer and a male soldier had been injured, both of whom were members of the predominantly female Caracal battalion responsible for defending the Israel-Egypt border.

The frontier between Israel and Egypt is usually quiet,. However, Islamic militants in Egypt’s lawless Sinai peninsula have attempted to carry out attacks against Israel in recent years. No one immediately claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack.

In September 2012, an Israeli soldier was killed in a similar shooting. A year earlier, a series of coordinated attacks killed seven Israelis.

Al-Qaida-linked militants in Sinai have also carried out deadly attacks against the Egyptian military, which has been trying to crack down on their activity in the desert.

Since July 2013, Egypt’s security forces have struggled to contain an insurgency in the northern Sinai peninsular waged by the jihadist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdes, which loosely means Champions of Jerusalem.

The Israeli military said it had dispatched troops to the area to prevent infiltration into its territory. In the meantime, it asked residents to remain in their homes.

A spokesman for Egypt’s police force, Maj-Gen Hany Abdellatif, claimed there had been a gunfight between smugglers and Egyptian police officers on the border with Israel at about 12.30pm. But he gave no further information and said he did not know whether any Israelis had been affected.

Israeli sources said, however, the incident in which the soldiers were wounded occurred an hour and a half later.

A spokesman for the Egyptian military would not confirm Abdellatif’s statement, and gave no further comment.

Security concerns and an influx of tens of thousands of African migrants prompted Israel to erect a 250km (160-mile) barrier from the Red Sea port of Eilat to the Palestinian Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean. It was completed in 2012.