Gunmen attacked several checkpoints in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Thursday, killing at least five soldiers.

Gunmen attacked several checkpoints in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Thursday, killing at least five soldiers, security sources said.

"Five Egyptian troops on Thursday were killed and 20 injured, including ten civilians, in attacks on two security checkpoints in northern Sinai," a security source said.

According to the source, Egyptian security forces fired back at the assailants, killing 15 of them.

Medical sources have said that ten civilians were hospitalized on Thursday from injuries sustained in the crossfire between security forces and the militants near the site of the attacks.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Egypt has been hit by security unrest since July 2013, when the then Defense Minister Abdulfattah al-Sisi toppled the Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Mursi and put him in jail.

Soon after that, Sisi ran for presidential elections and won the race. His latest noticeable action was his army's participation in the Saudi-led war on Sanaa, despite that hundreds of his people live in Yemen escaping poverty and unemployment in their country.