Roadside bombs kill 5 police in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula

By Alsayyed Saber

CAIRO (AA) - At least five policemen were killed and another three injured in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Monday when their vehicles struck a number of roadside bombs, according to local security sources.

Three police vehicles were on the road linking the Sinai city of Bir al-Abd to the northern city of Al-Arish when they struck a series of improvised explosive devices, local media quoted unnamed security sources as saying.

The incident left five policemen dead, including an officer, and another three people injured, including an army brigadier-general, the sources said.

No group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack, while the Egyptian authorities have yet to comment on the incident.

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

Since then, hundreds of Egyptian security personnel have been killed in attacks across Sinai -- especially in the peninsula’s volatile northeastern quadrant, which shares borders with both Israel and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

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