Six alleged terrorists were killed in a military operation in North Sinai on Monday amid the ongoing military operations fighting terrorism, Military Spokesperson Tamer Al-Refaie said in a statement.
In a statement, Al-Refaie said that the second field army forces received intelligence information that there is a terror den. Forces destroyed the den and preserved a huge amount of arms and ammunition.
In another context, 12 alleged terrorists were arrested in a security raid in Fayoum governorate, according to the statement of the Ministry of Interior.
According to the statement, the suspects belong to a group which the ministry called the “Vanguards of Hasm”, adding that it belongs to the banned Muslim Brotherhood group. It is suspected that the new group is an offshoot of Hasm.
The suspects allegedly admitted that they were planning to target security and public figures, after receiving professional training, read the statement.
On Friday, 16 Egyptian policemen were killed in a shootout in Egypt’s Western Desert, 130 km southwest of Cairo, during an operation to attack a camp of terrorists, according to the Ministry of Interior.
Egypt is currently battling several armed groups, concentrated mainly in the Sinai Peninsula, since the ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Since then, shootings that target police, army officers, and state officials have become a near-weekly occurrence in Egypt.
Since 2013, state security forces, represented by both the army and the police, have been engaged in violent clashes with “Sinai Province”, a group previously known as Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. In 2014, the group declared its affiliation with the Islamic State (IS) group and has launched deadly attacks on army and police checkpoints.
