An Egyptian soldier stands guard at a checkpo
An Egyptian soldier stands guard at a checkpoReuters

Armed men opened fire on a security checkpoint in Egypt's Al-Arish city in the Sinai Peninsula late Tuesday night, state media said.

The official MENA news agency reported that exchanges of gunfire continued late into the night but there were no immediate reports of injuries.

“Unknown armed men opened fire on a checkpoint on the main road between Al-Arish and Rafiah,” MENA said in a report quoted by the Reuters news agency.

The latest incident comes just several days after another terror attack near the Egypt-Israel border.

In the attack which occurred on Sunday, terrorists attacked two Egyptian army posts in the Egyptian part of Rafiah with anti-tank rockets and gunfire, killing 16 Egyptian soldiers. The terrorists then tried to infiltrate into Israel using two stolen Egyptian military vehicles, but were foiled by the IDF.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi vowed following the attack to avenge the deaths of the 16 soldiers.

Mourad Mowafy, the head of Egyptian intelligence, said on Tuesday that Egypt had received intelligence about Sunday’s attack on the Egypt-Israel border before it took place, but admitted that “Despite the detailed information about the attack, we never imagined that a Muslim would kill a Muslim during the meal to end the Ramadan fast day.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reported on Tuesday that Egypt began to seal off smuggling tunnels into Gaza.

A Reuters reporter said heavy equipment was brought to the Egyptian side of the tunnels, which are used to smuggle people to and from Gaza as well as food and fuel.

However, Israel’s Former Ambassador to Egypt Tzvi Mazel expressed doubt that the Egyptian government will take effective action against the terrorists who operate in Sinai.

“We must remember that the person running Egypt today is the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi,” he told Arutz Sheva. “The Muslim Brotherhood is the group that laid the foundations for today's radical Islam and Islamic terrorism. The Muslim Brotherhood developed a theory that favors a return to 'the good old days' of the prophet Mohammed and establish a Muslim empire. Islamic law would be the constitution and then they would make an effort to conquer the world.”

“The terrorists who came to carry out the attack from Sinai were raised upon the Muslim Brotherhood's fanatical theory,” he said. “Morsi and the terrorists who carried out the attack have the same ideology and the same goal – to impose Islam on the Middle East and the entire world.”