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Gunmen kill three officers in Egypt

Supporters of Mohammed Morsi have been staging near-daily protests in Egypt.Said Hamdy/Associated Press

CAIRO — Gunmen killed three police officers at a se-curity checkpoint north of Cairo on Monday, the Interior Ministry said as suspected Islamic militants waging an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula increasingly spread their campaign to mainland Egypt.

Egyptian security forces have been battling a full-fledged insurgency by the militants — including several Al Qaeda-linked groups — in the volatile northern part of Sinai since shortly after the July ouster of Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who became Egypt's first freely elected president in June last year.

The militants' campaign has been mostly confined to the troubled peninsula, which is separated from the mainland by the Suez Canal, but attacks outside Sinai have increased in recent weeks.

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The violence has included an assassination attempt on the interior minister last month, a car bombing of the military intelligence building in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia earlier this month, and the killing of four Coptic Christians and a Muslim outside a church in Cairo last week.

Associated Press