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Egypt Army Kills 7 Militants in Sinai

Egypt Army Kills 7 Militants in Sinai
Egypt Army Kills 7 Militants in Sinai

Seven suspected militants were killed and 13 others were arrested on Tuesday in a wide-scale security campaign across Sinai, security sources said.

The campaign targeted areas in North Sinai’s towns of Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah, state news agency MENA cited the sources as saying. A number of militant hotbeds were also raided, Albawaba reported.

At the time of the campaign, telephone communications were cut for several hours but were restored after the campaign concluded.

It was a preventive measure against “the use of mobile phones to detonate improvised explosive devices against security forces,” sources at the governorate said.

Northern Sinai has become the epicenter of a deadly insurgency against Egyptian security personnel since mid-2013, when Egypt’s military ousted the country’s first freely-elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

On July 1, a number of security checkpoints and a police station in the town of Sheikh Zuweid were attacked by the Sinai-based Ansar Bait Al-Maqdis militant group, in what was labeled as a failed attempt to take over the town.

The attacks claimed the lives of 17 army personnel and injured 13, according to military figures.

 

Financialtribune.com