A terrorist attack by militants on a police convoy near Arish city in North Sinai on Monday has killed and wounded a number of policemen, the interior ministry has said.

Anonymous sources told Al-Ahram Arabic's local correspondent, Hanaa El-Tabarani, that the number of dead has reached 18, with five injured.

According to anonymous security sources quoted by Al-Ahram, militants remotely detonated an IED that destroyed three armoured security vehicles and a vehicle jamming system in a convoy 17km away from Arish. 

Militants also attacked the convoy by driving into it with a car primed to explode, Al-Ahram reported.

The sources added that the ambulances could not reach the injured as militants were ambushing security and medical support.

In a subsequent update on Monday afternoon, Al-Ahram reported that the injured were being evacuated.

The interior ministry has released a short statement saying that "a number of police were killed" in a the convoy attack, but has not yet issued a final tally of the victims.

So far no group has claimed responsibility of the attack, although many similar deadly attacks on security forces in the last four years have been claimed by Sinai-based Islamist militant group Ansar Beit El-Maqdis.