Blast in Egypt's North Sinai kills five soldiers: Security source

ISMALIA (REUTERS) - A bomb targeting an armoured military vehicle killed five soldiers and wounded three others near the town of Sheikh Zuweid in Egypt's North Sinai on Sunday, security sources said, a region beset by Islamist militant violence.

North Sinai is the epicentre of an insurgency that has killed hundreds of members of the security services since mid-2013, when then army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after mass protests against his rule.

Two of the soldiers killed in the blast were officers, the sources said.

It was not immediately clear who had carried out the attack. An Egyptian militant group allied with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for other deadly attacks on soldiers in the Sinai.

The Egyptian group renamed itself Sinai Province last year after swearing allegiance to Islamic State, the hardline Sunni militant group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, drawing US-led airstrikes. The Egyptian faction had previously been known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.

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