DHAKA: Egypt’s army has said more than 100 fighters and 17 soldiers were killed after simultaneous assaults on military checkpoints in North Sinai, in the deadliest fighting in years in the peninsula.

A group pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) of Iraq and the Levant group, the Province of Sinai, claimed responsibility for attacks on more than 15 security sites on Wednesday.

Some security sources put the death toll for army and police much higher than the official figure.

After a day of fighting, which involved F-16 jets and Apache helicopters, the army said it would not stop its operations until it had cleared the area of all ‘terrorist concentrations’.

Military spokesman Mohamed Sanir, speaking to state television, said the situation in North Sinai was ‘100 percent under control’ by late Wednesday, Al Jazeera publishes this report on Thursday.

Armed groups in the Sinai Peninsula have stepped up their campaign against the Cairo government since 2013, when then-army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood after mass protests against his rule.

BDST: 1451 HRS, JULY 02, 2015
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