Army check point in Sinai's El-Arish
Army check point in Sinai's El-ArishReuters

Ten members of Egypt's military were killed on Thursday when their vehicles were hit by two improvised bombs during an operation against jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula, the military said, according to Reuters.

Three officers and seven soldiers were killed, the military said in a statement, adding that its forces killed 15 people and arrested seven others during the raid, which it said targeted "highly dangerous terrorists" in the central Sinai area.

Two policemen, an officer and a conscript, were later killed in fighting near a police station in Arish, the capital of North Sinai province.

Egypt has been suffering from violent terrorist attacks in the Sinai since the January 2011 revolution that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.

The attacks increased after the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.

Most of the terrorist attacks in the Sinai have been claimed by the Sinai Province terrorist group, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS).

Among the attacks claimed by Sinai Province in recent years were the assassination of a top Egyptian police general, who was gunned down as he left his home in a west Cairo neighborhood, and a bus bombing on a tour bus filled with South Korean tourists in the Sinai.

President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, the former military chief who led Morsi’s overthrow, describes Islamist militancy as an existential threat to Egypt.