Car bomb kills at least 15 soldiers in Egypt´s Sinai

Cairo: A car bomb killed at least 15 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula in one of several attacks Wednesday against the army in the violence-plagued region, a security official said.

Troops regularly come under attack in the Sinai, where militants linked to the Islamic State group are waging a bloody insurgency.

"More than 70 terrorist elements waged simultaneous attacks against five security checkpoints in North Sinai," the army spokesman said in a statement on his Facebook page.

The assault comes two days after the country´s state prosecutor Hisham Barakat was killed in a Cairo bombing targeting his convoy.

Barakat was the most senior government official killed since militants launched an insurgency following the military´s overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.