AFP – At least six Egyptian soldiers were wounded when improvised bombs targeted their armoured vehicles in the Sinai border town of Rafah on Friday, a security official said.

The explosions occurred during a military operation in the town bordering the Palestinian Gaza Strip, witnesses said.

The military regularly conducts operations in Rafah to destroy smuggling tunnels to Gaza, amid a wider campaign to quell a militant Islamist insurgency in the north of the Sinai peninsula.

The attack came a day after a suicide bomber killed four soldiers when he rammed his bomb-laden car into a checkpoint near the northern Sinai town of El-Arish