Firefight in Egypt’s Ismailia leaves 11 militants dead

At least 11 gunmen were killed Tuesday in an exchange of fire with security personnel in Egypt's northeastern Ismailia province, Egypt's Interior Ministry has said.

According to a ministry statement, security personnel raided a farm in Ismailia's Galbana district, "which militants had been using as a training area and staging point from which to conduct hostile operations".

The ministry did not, however, provide the identities of the "militants" killed or the group they belonged to.

According to the same statement, security forces arrested nine other individuals in the same operation, including six "militant leaders".

The ministry went on to assert that those arrested were linked to "terrorist groups" in the northern Sinai Peninsula who had been planning "hostile acts" against churches and vital state institutions "with the aim of destabilizing the country".

Tuesday's raid in Ismailia came as part of ongoing efforts by the Egyptian authorities to "monitor the movement of terrorist leaders based in North Sinai", according to the same statement.

Earlier Tuesday, the Egyptian army announced that another three militants had been killed in a separate raid carried out in the northern Sinai Peninsula.

The developments come four days after an attack by unknown perpetrators on a mosque near the North Sinai city of Al-Arish left more than 300 people dead, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt's modern history.

The Sinai Peninsula has remained the epicenter of a deadly militant insurgency since mid-2013, when Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first freely-elected president, was ousted and imprisoned in a bloody military coup.

Since then, hundreds of Egyptian security personnel have been killed in attacks across Sinai, especially in the peninsula's volatile northeastern quadrant, which shares borders with both Israel and the blockaded Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian authorities claim they are battling the Welayat Sina, or "Province of Sinai" group, which is said to have links to the Daesh terrorist organization.