Swarms of locust bugs started appearing across southern and central Israel on Monday, after reportedly spreading across neighboring Egypt on Sunday, the Israeli Agriculture Ministry confirmed to Xinhua.

The ministry prepared for a possible strike of the destructive bugs, infamous for stripping crops, after news travelled from Egypt on Sunday and set up an emergency hotline asking Israelis to report any sighting and work to prevent a possible outbreak.

A swarm of thousands was spotted in the afternoon at the southern area of the Negev Desert, and sightings were also reported from the port of central Tel Aviv later on Monday.

The ministry's wing of plants protection are tracing the advancement of the swarms and will spray places infected by the bugs overnight and Tuesday morning, a ministry official told Xinhua.

The ministry also stressed that the current situation is far from calling it a national outbreak.

"We are tracking the locust movement with the assistance of the United Nations' Food Organization, we have evaluations and we have planned ahead and prepared measures to handle a possible outbreak, " Moshe Weiss, deputy manager of plant protection services, told Xinhua.

The wing's experts predict that the swarms could move across the desert area to its western end towards Jordan.

The last time Israel was hit by locust was in 2004 when the bugs were spread across the southern port city of Eilat as well as in the Dead Sea area and Jerusalem.

The locust alert has special significance ahead of the Passover holiday, in which the Israelites exodus from Egypt is celebrated. Part of the biblical story about it claims that god imposed ten plagues upon the Egyptians to free the Israelites, one of them being an outbreak of locust. Endi

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