The cosmic electron background in low energy imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes: effect of the geomagnetic field

We report on an analysis of data from the southern hemisphere SUGAR cosmic ray detector. We confirm the existence of an excess of 10^18 eV cosmic rays from a direction close to the Galactic Centre, first reported by the AGASA group. We find that the signal is consistent with that from a point source, and we find no evidence for an excess of cosmic rays coming from the direction of the Galactic Centre itself.