Cairo, July 24 (RHC)-- A roadside bombing in Egypt’s volatile Sinai Peninsula has left four security forces dead, the Egyptian military says. Egypt’s Military spokesman Brigader General Mohammed Samir said on his Facebook page that one officer and three soldiers were killed on Thursday when their armored vehicle hit the bomb in the Sinai city of Rafah.

Blaming the incident on militants operating in the restive region, Samir further said that three troops were also wounded in Thursday’s bomb blast.

Meanwhile, a security official in Sinai, whose name was not mentioned in reports, said Thursday’s explosion occurred outside a checkpoint in the village of el-Mahdiya village, south of Rafah. No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing but it bears the hallmark of militants affiliated to the Takfiri ISIL terrorist group.

Egypt’s army has been fighting surging militancy in the troubled region since the former army chief and current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ousted the North African country’s first democratically-elected president Mohamed Morsi in a military coup in July 2013.

The army says that it has killed more than 1,000 militants in Siani over the past two years.