Explosion kills senior Egyptian officer in Sinai

A senior military officer and one soldier were killed today by a roadside explosion in Egypt’s north Sinai where the government faces a Daesh-led insurgency, security sources told Reuters.

Hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed in the insurgency and there have also been attacks in Cairo and other major Egyptian cities.

Militant groups appear to be stepping up attacks with the emergence of a new group calling itself the Revolution Brigade which claimed responsibility for the killing of a brigadier general, an armoured division commander in north Sinai, outside his home on the outskirts of Cairo last week.

That attack came just one week after Daesh guerrillas ambushed a military checkpoint killing 12 Egyptian soldiers in the town of Bir Al-Abd, the first major attack in the central Sinai area, which had so far escaped the militant’s campaign.

Military and police sources who did not wish to be identified told Reuters that today’s explosion was a targeted attack on Colonel Rami Hassanein, who was killed while travelling in an armoured vehicle just outside northern Sinai’s Sheikh Zuweid.

One other soldier was killed and three others were injured in the attack, the sources said.

Egypt’s military has not released a statement on the incident and was not available for comment.

An insurgency in the rugged and thinly populated Sinai Peninsula gained pace after the military overthrew President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013 following mass protests against his rule.

However, attacks by armed groups began mainly due to the Egyptian government’s use of disproportionate force against the Sinai’s Arab desert dwellers, killing many villagers in their campaign to cut off the Palestinian Gaza Strip enclave from Egypt.

The militant group staging the insurgency pledged allegiance to Daesh in 2014 and adopted the name Sinai Province.