Police officer killed by gunmen in southern Egypt

By Omar Thabit

CAIRO (AA) - A police officer was killed on Tuesday -- and another two injured -- by gunmen in Egypt’s southern Qena province, according to a local security source.

“Unidentified gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in a mountainous area of Qena,” the source, who preferred anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to media, told Anadolu Agency.

The Interior Ministry, which runs Egypt’s sprawling police force, has yet to release an official statement on the incident.

On the same day, the Egyptian army announced it had killed five “militant extremists” in the the volatile Sinai Peninsula.

“The army, in coordination with our air forces, struck an underground bunker used by extremist elements in central Sinai,” military spokesman Tamer al-Refaei said in a statement.

According to al-Refaei, three “extremist elements” were arrested in the same operation.

Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has remained the epicenter of a deadly militant insurgency since mid-2013, when Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely-elected president, was ousted in a bloody military coup.

Since then, hundreds of Egyptian security personnel have been killed in militant attacks across the restive peninsula, which shares borders with both Israel and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Egyptian authorities say they are battling the Welayat Sinai, or “Province of Sinai” group, which is said to have links with the Daesh terrorist organization.