Members of the Egyptian police special forces stand guard on Cairo’s landmark Tahrir Square on January 25, 2016.

A senior military official who served in the northern Sinai was killed on Saturday in front of his home on the outskirts of Cairo, security sources said.

Gunmen opened fire on Brigadier General Adel Rajaaie, who commanded an armored division deployed in Sinai, when he left his home in Obour city in the morning, sources told Alarabiya.net.

The army general was killed by motorcycle-riding gunmen who fired several shots at him and escaped the scene, they added.

“At 6 am they killed him. I can’t tell you if it was six or twelve bullets. It was before he could get into his car,” his sister-in-law Huda Zein Elabedine told AFP.

A military official told AFP that the officer has been “martyred.”

Police have set up checkpoints at entrance and exit points of the city, local newspapers have said.

Egypt is facing an Islamist insurgency led by ISIS’s branch in North Sinai, where hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed. There have also been attacks in Cairo and other cities.

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