According to Al Jazeera , Bir al-Abed had been largely spared the violence that had rocked northern Sinai by insurgents following the ouster of Morsi 3 years ago . The attack came weeks after Egypt marks its first anniversary of the Metrojet Flight 9268 crash over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31 , 2015 . The attack began early in the morning when militants approached and attacked a military checkpoint . The attack resulted the deaths of 12 Egyptian army personnel and wounded six others
Metrojet Flight 9268
Metrojet Flight 9268
October 2016 Sinai attacks