CAIRO:  At least 10 Egyptian soldiers were killed, including a colonel, and several injured in two suicide attacks on army checkpoints in northern Sinai on Friday, security sources said.

Two vehicles were blown up while passing through two checkpoints on a road outside the border city of Rafah, the sources said. No group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Egypt faces an Islamist insurgency led by Islamic State in the rugged and thinly populated northern Sinai, where hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed since 2013, when the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi after mass protests.