Militants killed, arrested in Sinai raid: Egyptian army

The Egyptian army announced Tuesday that three militants had been killed in a raid carried out in the northern Sinai Peninsula.

"Army forces successfully eliminated three extremists and captured five others," army spokesman Tamer al-Rifai said in a statement.

Anadolu Agency was unable to independently verify the army's claims.

The army raid comes four days after an attack by unknown perpetrators on a mosque near the North Sinai city of Al-Arish that left more than 300 people dead, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt's modern history.

The Sinai Peninsula has remained the epicenter of a deadly militant insurgency since mid-2013, when Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first freely-elected president, was ousted and imprisoned in a bloody military coup.

Since then, hundreds of Egyptian security personnel have been killed in attacks across Sinai, especially in the peninsula's volatile northeastern quadrant, which shares borders with both Israel and the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian authorities claim they are battling the Welayat Sina, or "Province of Sinai" group, which is said to have links to the Daesh terrorist organization.