Egypt military pounds Sinai militant positions, kills 23

CAIRO — The Egyptian military pounded Islamic militant positions and killed 23 extremists in dawn raids in Sinai on Thursday, a day after an unprecedented assault by Islamic State-linked extremists in the restive peninsula that undermined government efforts to stem an insurgency in the area despite a two-year crackdown.

The officials also said the army was searching for extremists house to house in the town of Sheikh Zuweid — where the militants attacked a string of army checkpoints the previous day — and was demining roads in and around the area that militants had booby trapped with mines and improvised explosives devices.

The coordinated assault by scores of extremists that focused on Sheikh Zuweid involved a wave of suicide bombings and an attack on its main police station, which they shelled with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades in a firefight with police inside that lasted most of the day, the officials said.

The army said 17 troops and over 100 militants were killed, although several senior security officials from multiple branches of Egypt’s forces in Sinai said scores more of soldiers also died in the fighting.

The main insurgent organization operating in Sinai, which calls itself the Sinai province of the Islamic State group, claimed its fighters targeted 15 army and police positions and staged three suicide bombings, two that targeted checkpoints and one that hit an officers’ club in the nearby city of el-Arish.