NORTH SINAI, Jan 16 (Aswat Masriya) - A woman was killed after a shell from an unknown origin fell over her house in North Sinai's Rafah late Friday, a security source said.

The source, who preferred to remain anonymous, added to Aswat Masriya that the 55 year-old deceased woman's body was taken to the Central Rafah Hospital.

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, 2014, 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 it released three weeks later, 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.