SUEZ, Jan 5 (Aswat Masriya) - Security forces shot dead two bikers who refused to stop at a checkpoint in Suez on Monday, a security source said.

The incident shortly follows the shooting of a driver who refused to stop at a Sinai checkpoint on Friday.

Suez Security Director Tarek al-Gazzar told Aswat Masriya that the two killed men were driving an unlicensed motorbike, which aroused suspicion among security forces at the checkpoint. The men sped away when an officer asked them to stop, Gazzar said, prompting the officer to fire at them. 

Gazzar said the officer was not aiming at the men but was shooting into the air, yet the gunshots hit their heads.

The Suez Prosecution ordered an autopsy for the killed men to determine the cause of death. It also ordered the seizure of the projectiles used in shooting at them.

Security forces in North Sinai also shot at a car which refused to stop at a checkpoint in al-Arish on Friday, killing the driver and injuring another passenger.

Army Spokesman Mohamed Samir said in a statement the car was trying to flee the checkpoint, refusing to respond to army forces' warning signs. He added that the car is owned by someone other than the two passengers and that killed driver possessed no documents giving him the right to drive it.

Egyptian authorities have intensified security measures in the Sinai Peninsula in reaction to proliferating militant attacks there, particularly since the army's ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July 2013, which followed mass protests against his rule.

At least 30 military personnel were killed in a suicide blast which targeted a security checkpoint in Sinai's Sheikh Zuweid on October 24, in the worst militant attack since Mursi's ouster. 

Egypt's most dangerous militant group, the Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility for the attack in a video released on November 14, shortly after pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared a three-month state of emergency and a nighttime curfew in parts of the Sinai Peninsula in response to the attack.