Gunmen killed two Egyptian policemen Wednesday in the Sinai Peninsula, the interior ministry said, in an attack claimed by ISIL terrorists.

Gunmen killed two Egyptian policemen Wednesday in the Sinai Peninsula, the interior ministry said, in an attack claimed by ISIL terrorists.

Egypt's security forces have come under regular attack since the military ousted MB president Mohamed Mursi two years ago.

In Wednesday's attack in El-Arish, the capital of North Sinai province, "unidentified assailants on a motorbike opened fire on two police, who died of their wounds," the interior ministry said in a statement.

The attackers managed to escape, according to security officials.

The Egyptian affiliate of ISIL, which calls itself Sinai Province, said it was responsible and posted photographs of the purported attack and its aftermath online.

The attack was the latest in a year-long battle for the lawless area between government forces and assorted opponents, the most formidable of which is a local affiliate of the Takfiri group, ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant).

The long-running conflict in the neglected north Sinai intensified following the army's 2013 overthrow of the country's first freely elected president, Mohammad Mursi.