An Egyptian soldier stands guard along the Rafah border with Israel on July 19, 2014.

A car bomb outside a fast-food restaurant in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula wounded 10 people late on Tuesday when it exploded as security forces were evacuating a heavily populated area, security and medical sources said, according to Reuters news agency.

The explosion shook the town of Arish in northern Sinai, a volatile area where security forces have launched a crackdown on Islamist militants, the sources said.

“We blew up the car remotely. There was a half a tonne of explosives” inside, an interior ministry spokesman, Hani Abdel Latif, told Agence France-Presse.

It was too dangerous to try to defuse the bomb, Abdel Latif said adding that those injured were cut by shattered window glass.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Tuesday’s blast came during a nighttime curfew ordered since an Oct. 24 suicide attack that killed 30 soldiers in a Sinai zone bordering the Gaza Strip. It was not clear what the car-bomb was targeting.

The remote but strategic Sinai Peninsula borders Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal.

Security forces have been squaring off against militants who have killed hundreds of soldiers and police, mostly in Sinai, since the army toppled President Mohammed Mursi in July 2013 after mass protests against his rule. Attacks on civilian areas are more unusual.

 
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