Egypt soldier killed a day after deadly Sinai blasts

Separate militant attacks in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula killed one soldier and wounded another Monday, a day after jihadists loyal to the Islamic State group killed 14 people in twin bombings.

Security officials said gunmen shot dead a soldier at a checkpoint in the Rafah area on the border with the Islamist-run Gaza Strip Palestinian enclave.

They added that a second soldier at another checkpoint in the same area was wounded in a similar attack.

The army has sent in troops and armour to fight a dogged insurgency in the Sinai that has grown since then army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday’s attacks, but Ansar Beit al-Maqdis said it was behind Sunday’s two bombings.

The first, a roadside bombing on an army vehicle near the town of Sheikh Zuweid, killed six soldiers.

Hours later, a suicide truck bombing at a police station in North Sinai’s provincial capital El-Arish killed eight people.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis changed its name last year to the “Sinai Province” after pledging allegiance to IS.

It has claimed several sophisticated attacks in Sinai and the Nile valley and wants to establish a province of the self-declared IS “caliphate” straddling parts of Syria and Iraq.