Islamic extremists killed 10 Egyptian soldiers in fighting
in a central part of the restive Sinai Peninsula during an army raid early
Thursday on a militant hideout in the area, the military said.
Egyptian army spokesman Tamer al-Rifai said troops killed
15 extremists and took seven prisoners in the raid, but that three officers and
seven enlisted men were killed by roadside bombs while in pursuit of the
militants.
Egypt has been battling an insurgency in northern Sinai
for years, mainly by militants from an Islamic State affiliate. The army has been
increasingly saying it is taking the fight deeper into the peninsula’s sparsely
populated desert and mountainous areas, such as Jebel Halal and near the town
of Hasana, targeting insurgent weapons depots and strongholds.
Troops destroyed a large amount of explosives in the raid
and seized other weapons, ammunition and equipment, including roadside bombs,
computers, solar panels, documents and mobile phones, al-Rifai said.
Both the army and IS regularly claim killing opponents,
but journalists are banned from the area and the claims are often impossible to
verify.
Earlier this month, the Sinai-based IS branch claimed
responsibility for the killing of Col. Yasser Mohammed el-Hadidi, a senior
officer in the flashpoint northern peninsula town of el-Arish, with a roadside
bomb, and two other officers the following day.
The group has also been behind a string of deadly slayings
of Egyptian Christians in northern Sinai, which began in December and which has
prompted much of the region’s Christian Coptic minority to start leaving the
area.
The fighting remains hundreds of kilometers (miles) away
from the Red Sea tourist destinations in southern Sinai, but tourism has failed
to recover due to worries over airport security after a bomb brought down a
Russian airliner full of tourists in October 2015, killing all 224 people
onboard.
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