Army forces arrested three alleged militants in a cave in central Sinai on Saturday, Military Spokesperson Tamer Al-Refaie announced in a statement. He added that during the operation, which was headed by the second army, four motorbikes suspected of being used by militants were confiscated, as well as a truck. Forces destroyed the den and seized a large amount of arms and ammunition. The identities of the arrested suspects were not made public, and the exact crimes they perpetrated were not announced. Egypt has been battling several armed groups, concentrated mainly in the restive Sinai peninsula, and the fight escalated after the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Since then, shootings that target police, military personnel, and state officials have become a near-weekly occurrence in Egypt. Recent activity in the peninsula includes the killing of six alleged militants in a military operation last Monday, as part of the ongoing military operations combatting terrorism. 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 rebranded itself as it declared affiliation with the Islamic State (IS) group, and has repeatedly launched deadly attacks on army and police checkpoints.
