Car bomb kills at least 15 soldiers in Egypt's Sinai

A car bomb killed at least 15 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula in one of several attacks Wednesday against the army in the violence-plagued region, a security official said.

Troops regularly come under attack in the Sinai, where jihadists linked to Daesh group are waging a bloody insurgency.

"More than 70 terrorist elements waged simultaneous attacks against five security checkpoints in North Sinai," the army spokesman said in a statement on his Facebook page.

The assault comes two days after the country's state prosecutor Hisham Barakat was killed in a Cairo bombing targeting his convoy.

Barakat was the most senior government official killed since jihadists launched an insurgency following the military's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The authorities designated Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood a "terrorist group" in December 2013 as part of a crackdown on the opposition that has left hundreds of his supporters dead and thousands in jail.
Source: AFP