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Gunmen kill 2 officers in Egypt's restive Sinai

25 July 2014 19:13 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Two Egyptian senior security men were killed in an armed attack by gunmen on Friday in Sheikh Zuweid city of the restive North Sinai province bordering Israel, a security source told Xinhua, APA reports.

"The assailants pursued an armored vehicle the two security men were driving, blocked their way, stopped them and opened fire at them," the source added, noting that one of the two brigadier- generals belonged to the police and the other was from the military.

The perpetrators are mostly extremists whose attacks against police and military personnel and premises mounted since the removal of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi by the military last year.

The deadly attack comes a few days after militants killed 22 military men at a checkpoint in Egypt's western desert Al-Wadi al- Gadid (the New Valley) province, about 500 km south of the capital Cairo.

Extremist self-proclaimed Islamist groups, who refer to Morsi's overthrow as "a military coup," say their attacks were in retaliation for the harsh security crackdown on the major sit-ins of Morsi's supporters in August 2013, which left at least 1,000 killed and thousands more arrested.