Seven Egypt soldiers killed by Sinai bomb

A roadside bomb killed seven Egyptian soldiers and wounded four in the restive Sinai Peninsula on Sunday, security officials said.

The bomb exploded next to an armoured vehicle guarding a gas pipeline in north Sinai, the officials said.

The rugged peninsula has become less secure following the military overthrew of democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

A military official said first responders were still assessing the casualties.

The attack came three days after a similar bombing killed two policemen in the north Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish.

Militants killed 17 policemen in Sinai in two bombings in September and later released footage of the attacks.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis

Those attacks were claimed by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the most active militant group in Egypt. It tried to assassinate the interior minister in Cairo last year with a car bomb.

The group, whose name means Partisans of Jerusalem in English, initially focused their attacks on neighbouring Israel, firing rockets and conducting two cross border raids that killed a number of Israeli civilians and soldiers.

They have expressed support for Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, although it has not formally pledged its allegiance.

The military has said it killed at least 22 militants in October, including a local Ansar Beit al-Maqdis commander. 

The group itself has acknowledged the arrest or deaths of its cadres, but so far the army has been unable to quell the militants despite a massive operation in which it has deployed attack helicopters and tanks.

The militants sometimes operate openly in north Sinai, setting up impromptu checkpoints and handing out leaflets.

Three Egyptian soldiers die in Gaza tunnel collapse

Meanwhile, Two Egyptian army officers and a soldier were killed Saturday when a smuggling tunnel connecting Sinai and the Palestinian Gaza Strip collapsed as they were preparing to blow it up, officials said.

One army soldier was injured and another missing in the collapse, which happened as troops were planting explosives.

The army says it has destroyed more than 1,600 such tunnels -- most of them after the ouster of president Morsi last year -- which the Palestinian group Hamas uses to smuggle in food, money and arms.

Cairo has poured troops into the Sinai peninsula to counter the insurgency since that has killed scores of policemen and soldiers.

Israel launched a military offensive this summer against Gaza, in part with the declared objective of destroying such tunnels.