SINAI CAR BOMB KILLS 12 EGYPTIAN SOLDIERS

         El -Arish, Mesir, 17 Muharram 1435/21 November 2013 (MINA)  –  At least ten Egyptian soldiers were killed and dozens injured in a car bomb on Wednesday near the Sinai city of El-Arish, security officials told.

        A car laden with explosives hit two buses carrying around 100 Egyptian soldiers, the officials said, Ma’an News Agency quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

        Egyptian security sources told Ma’an that a Hyundai Verna was parked on the right-hand side of the main road between Rafah and El-Arish, and had signaled that it had broken down.

       The car, which was packed with explosives, was then remotely detonated as four unarmored personnel carriers passed by. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.

       Egyptian officials said that the militants who detonated the car bomb were being updated by others about the movement of the vehicles, which were loaded at a site in Rafah.

        The attack is the deadliest since an August 19 ambush by gunmen on a convoy of security forces killed 25 policemen in the town of Rafah in North Sinai.

          In a separate incident on Wednesday, three people were wounded in a bomb attack on a security checkpoint in Cairo, state television reported.

         This week, gunmen shot dead a senior security officer outside his home in Cairo.

         Well over 100 members of the security forces have been killed in Sinai since Morsi was deposed by the army.

        That attack was the bloodiest in the Sinai Peninsula in several years.

        Egyptian armed forces launched large scale military action against militants in Sinai earlier in September, in what officials described as the largest mobilization of force in the area since the 1973 war with Israel.

      The crackdown has resulted in more than 1,000 people being killed and more than 2,000 arrested nationwide since mid-August. (T/P09/E1).

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).