Car bombs kill six in attacks on Egypt army targets

AT LEAST six soldiers have died in two suicide bomb attacks in Egypt’s volatile Sinai peninsula, security officials said.

The attacks happened at a military intelligence hearquarters in the border town of Rafah and at a nearby army checkpoint.

In the first the bomber drove into the one-storey building at high speed, collapsing its front part and burying an unspecified number of troops under the rubble, officials said.

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Shortly afterwards another suicide bomber blew up an explosives-filled car next to an army checkpoint.

There were also reports that militants fired rocket-propelled grenades.

The nearby border crossing with the Gaza Strip was closed in the immediate aftermath of the attack as troops searched the area for suspects, the state news agency reported.

Militants in Sinai, some with links to al Qaida, have been targeting Egyptian forces for months in the strategic peninsula bordering Gaza and Israel. Their attacks have become much more frequent and deadlier since the removal in July of Egypt’s Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

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The Egyptian military earlier this week launched a major offensive against militants in the northern region of Sinai.

Officials have described the offensive, which started on Saturday, as the biggest sweep of the region in recent years, aiming to weed out al Qaida-inspired groups that have taken control of villages in northern Sinai.

Meanwhile a powerful explosion has caused serious damage to Libya’s foreign ministry building in the heart of the coastal city of Benghazi, security officials said.

The early morning blast also damaged the building next door housing the Benghazi branch of the Libyan Central Bank.

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The officials said several passers-by were slightly injured by the blast, which blew out windows in nearby buildings.

The blast came exactly one year after al Qaida-linked militants stormed the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, killing the US ambassador and three other Americans. Both the bombing on Wednesday and last year’s attack on the American consulate took place on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

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