Cairo: Militants have shot dead five Egyptian conscripts in the Sinai peninsula, as the army searched for eight servicemen missing after an attack on a navy boat in the Mediterranean.
The military carried out air strikes in Sinai, killing three members of the Islamist militant group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, security officials said on Thursday.
Egypt has been hit by a wave of attacks since the army overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year, infuriating his supporters.
In Cairo, 16 people were injured in a panicked crush on a Cairo metro train after a small bomb exploded during rush hour.
The attacks in Sinai, in which two police conscripts and three soldiers were taken out of their vehicles and shot dead, bore the hallmarks of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which often sets up impromptu checkpoints in the lawless peninsula.
The ambushes came a day after an unprecedented assault on a navy boat wounded five servicemen and left eight lost at sea.
The military, which has said late it is still conducting search and rescue operations for those missing, has called the incident a "terrorist" attack.
A security official said dozens of suspects rounded up at sea after the assault are still being interrogated.
It was not immediately clear whether they were "terrorists" or drug and weapons smugglers who frequent that part of the sea, he said.
The Egyptian government is fighting an Islamist militant insurgency that has killed scores of policemen and soldiers, but such a maritime attack has not been seen before.
The incident came days after Ansar Beit al-Maqdis pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State jihadist organisation in Iraq and Syria.
No comments :
Post a Comment