Six people, including two policemen, were wounded on Saturday when two car bombs detonated near a police station in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, security sources and the state news agency said.
The two cars exploded when security forces fired at them after their drivers refused to stop near a police station in the Northern Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid, security sources said.
The two wounded policemen, a captain and a recruit, were transferred to hospital with severe injuries, they added.
The state news agency MENA quoted security sources saying that another two cars raced away from the scene under gunfire from security forces.
Egypt is fighting Islamist insurgents who have killed hundreds of police and soldiers since the army ousted President Mohammed Morsi in 2013 following mass protests against his Islamist rule. The government makes no distinction between Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement and the Sinai-based militants while the Brotherhood denies any links to the insurgents.
In a separate attack, a soldier was shot in the head when unknown gunmen fired at him at a security site in Central Sinai, where militant attacks are rare compared with the north of the rugged, desert region, MENA said.
No one claimed responsibility for Saturday's attacks.
A roadside bomb in Cairo killed a police captain and wounded eight other people on Friday, the interior ministry said.
Last month, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks that killed at least 30 security personnel in Sinai. The militant group changed its name to Sinai Province last year when it swore allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, the hardline militant group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria.
While most of the worst attacks have hit Sinai, a remote but strategic region bordering Gaza, Israeli-Occupied Palestine and Egypt's Suez Canal, smaller blasts and attacks have become increasingly common in Cairo and other cities.
In October, a major attack also claimed by Sinai Province in the peninsula that killed at at least 33 members of the security forces prompted the government to declare a state of emergency in parts of Sinai, allow civilians to be tried in military courts, and close the Rafah crossing, Gaza's only outlet to the outside world not under Israeli control.
Egyptian authorities have also decided to completely demolish the city of Rafah, in a bid to create a buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza.
In January, authorities officially began the second stage of evacuation of Rafah houses.
In the first phase, more than 800 homes are being demolished and 1,100 families displaced to build the 500-meter wide, 13.5-kilometer long buffer zone.
The main part of the plan, aimed at blocking the southern borders with Gaza, is being implemented under the pretext of stemming jihadists reportedly infiltrating Egypt's Sinai Peninsula from across the border through the Rafah crossing.
