CAIRO: Gunmen killed three policemen in Egypt's volatile Sinai Peninsula on Monday, security sources said.
And an Islamist militant group released a video of a deadly drive-by shooting of a man they identified as an army colonel.
The Sinai has become a major security headache for the Egyptian authorities since the army overthrew elected President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July.
Almost daily attacks by al Qaeda-inspired militants have killed more than 100 members of the security forces since Mursi's ouster, said the army spokesman on Sept. 15.
Instability in the Sinai worries Western governments because the region borders Israel and flanks the strategic Suez Canal, the quickest sea route between Asia and Europe.
The Sinai is also difficult to police because it borders the Gaza Strip, which is run by the Islamist group Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Egyptian army says Gaza-based militants take part in attacks over the border and accuses Hamas of doing too little to secure the area, allegations it denies.
In the latest attacks, gunmen opened fire on a police station in the city of El-Arish in North Sinai, killing two policemen as they were eating breakfast outside the building.
In a separate incident, a police officer walking in the city was shot in the head and chest and killed.
Gunmen also shot and killed a civilian in another attack in the nearby town of Sheikh Zuwaid.
"LIQUIDATING THE APOSTATES"
Militants expanded into a security vacuum left by the 2011 fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
But attacks have risen sharply since Mursi's overthrow. Attacks elsewhere in Egypt have raised concerns that an Islamist insurgency could spread beyond Sinai.
The Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis group claimed responsibility for a failed suicide bombing in Cairo on the interior minister this month.
Sinai militants, who are armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, explosives and Grad missiles, have posted online footage of some of their attacks .
A common practice among al Qaeda-linked groups trying to motivate fighters and intimidate their enemies.
In one video posted on a jihadi website on Monday, a militant group calling itself "al-Nusra Battalion" shows what it says was the attack on Colonel Komi.
A man with an assault rifle is filmed aiming from a car window and shooting at another vehicle driving on a desert road.
"Targeting the criminal apostates and liquidating them," a caption reads.
A picture of the uniformed officer flashes on the screen next to the car seen in the drive-by shooting, a back window pocked with bullet holes and blood running down the driver's door.
The video says al-Nusra Battalion is a unit of "al-Firqan Brigade", a militant group that took responsibility for an attack this month on a container ship in the Suez Canal.
The army, which has been operating with the police in Sinai, said on Aug. 7 that it had killed 60 militants in the month since Mursi's overthrow.
"There are great security successes on the ground in Sinai now," Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif said when asked about the al-Nusra Battalion video.
"We've arrested dangerous elements and confiscated heavy weapons, and we have a large degree of control." (Reuters)
