Egypt’s army said it has killed 12 terrorists in the early hours of Friday in the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid in their latest efforts in the fight against an Islamist militant insurgency that has spiked in the past two years.

The army has also destroyed two warehouses storing explosive materials, an army statement read.

On Thursday, a bomb that struck an armored military vehicle in North Sinai killed four soldiers and injured three others.

Sinai Province, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group (IS), has claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on their Twitter account.

The militant group, Egypt's most deadly, claimed a missile attack last week on an Egyptian navy boat off North Sinai coast--adjoining Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip. It also said it was behind a powerful bombing that hit the Italian Consulate in central Cairo a week earlier.

In the past two years, hundreds of security personnel were killed and injured in terrorist attacks in the restive Sinai peninsula. Consequently, the army announced the killings of hundreds of ‘terrorists’ in their offensive across North Sinai.

https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/136112.aspx