Egypt’s President Mohammad Mursi Wednesday ordered spy chief Murad Muwafi to retire in a shuffle of military and intelligence ranks extending to the head of the Republican Guard and the governor of North Sinai.

Egypt's President Mohammad Mursi Wednesday ordered spy chief Murad Muwafi to retire in a shuffle of military and intelligence ranks extending to the head of the Republican Guard and the governor of North Sinai.

The decision comes several days after a deadly ambush in Sinai killed 16 soldiers, prompting an unprecedented military crackdown in the peninsula, but Mursi's spokesman did not say whether the attack had prompted the changes.

Mursi also ordered Defence Minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi to find a new head for the military police, his spokesman Yassir Ali said in a televised statement.

The Egyptian president also appointed Mohammad Rafaat Abdel Wahad Shehata as the interim head of General Intelligence.

Earlier on Wednesday, Muwafi, himself a former governor of North Sinai, issued a rare public statement saying that his agency had forewarning of the weekend attack that killed the soldiers.

But he said the intelligence did not specify where the attack would take place and he had passed it on to the "relevant authorities," adding that his powerful agency's role was only to collect information.

The shuffle extended to Abdel Wahab Mabruk, the governor of North Sinai where the attack took place.

Mursi is likely to have reached the decisions with the military, which ruled the country between Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February 2011 and Morsi's inauguration as his successor in June.