Militants kill three Egyptian policemen and retired officer

Militants shot dead three Egyptian policeman and a retired officer in separate attacks in the capital of North Sinai, security officials said on Saturday.

Gunmen, suspected of belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group’s affiliate in Egypt, shot dead two policemen in the town of El-Arish overnight Friday before fleeing in a vehicle, the officials said.

They gunned down a policeman outside a school in the town and the retired officer at a market place hours later, the officials said.

Separately, a police officer was killed along with three members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood in an exchange of fire north of Cairo when police raided a village looking for wanted Brotherhood members.

Militants have killed scores of policemen and soldiers in an insurgency in the Sinai peninsula since the army overthrew Islamist president Mohammed Mursi in 2013.

Hundreds of Mursi supporters, and dozens of policemen, were killed in protest violence after his overthrow.

The main militant group, formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, pledged allegiance to ISIS, which controls territory in Iraq and Syria, in November last year.

It is based in the north of Sinai but has carried out attacks in Cairo and killed three South Korean tourists in a suicide bombing last year in a south Sinai resort.