Egypt army kills 38 extremists in Sinai

At least 38 extremists were killed and 27 others were injured in overnight raids launched by the Egyptian Armed Forces on extremists' hideouts in Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid cities of North Sinai province, a security source told Xinhua.

The source pointed out that the raids started late Tuesday and continued until Wednesday early morning, where the raids destroyed four houses, four vehicles and ten motorbikes.

The said extremists belong to Sinai-based al-Qaida-inspired Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) group, which has recently pledged allegiance to the regional Islamic State (IS) militant group, according to the source.

Meanwhile, the forces also foiled two car-bomb explosion attempts targeting security personnel in Arish and Rafah cities and busted five explosive devices planted on a highway in Arish.

Egypt has been facing a rising wave of terrorism since the ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi by the military in July 2013 and the security crackdown on his supporters that left at least 1,000 killed and thousands more arrested.

Anti-government attacks have since extended from Sinai to the capital Cairo and other provinces across the country, with the AMB group claiming responsibility for dozens of deadly attacks that left hundreds of military and police personnel dead.

In October 2014, a car-bomb attack in North Sinai killed around 30 Egyptian soldiers. Later in January, a series of simultaneous terrorist attacks and suicide bombings, also in North Sinai, killed more than 30 military and policemen in addition to 14 civilians.

Over the past few weeks, security campaigns have killed dozens of militants in the peninsula as part of the new Egyptian leadership's "war against terrorism."

Since Morsi's removal, his loyalists have been staging anti-government marches denouncing his ouster as "a coup." The Muslim Brotherhood group, Morsi's power base, was blacklisted by the new leadership as "a terrorist organization." Endit