Army forces on Wednesday managed to kill five militants and arrested a further two, thwarting an attack, official army spokesperson Tamer El-Refai said in a statement. During the operation, two army soldiers were killed. The attack was planning was planned to target an army checkpoint. According to the statement, the assigned forces also managed to kill a militant who wore a suicide belt before he blew himself up. The counterattack comes after a A Monday attack in North Sinai killed and injured more than a dozen policemen and paramedics, officials said. Since 2013, state security forces, represented by both the army and the police, have been engaged in violent clashes with "Sinai Province," known previously as Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. In 2014, the group declared its affiliation to IS and has launched deadly attacks on army and police checkpoints. Over the course of the last two years, the Egyptian armed forces launched counterattacks against militant stationing points across the Sinai Peninsula, where the group is based, particularly in the cities of Sheikh Zuweid, Rafah, and Al-Arish.
