CAIRO, Jan 16 (Aswat Masriya) - An army officer was killed on Thursday while trying to dismantle an improvised explosive device (IED) on al-Arish-Rafah International Road in North Sinai, police sources said.

Security forces carried out an extensive combing of the area in search for other IEDs and the unidentified perpetrators, the sources added. 

A police officer was killed while trying to defuse an IED planted in the vicinity of a police station in Giza on January 6.

Militants have stepped up attacks targeting security forces in Egypt, particularly in the Sinai Peninsula, 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.