Sources told Al-Jazeera that an explosion targeted an Egyptian army patrol in the center of Sinai, killing seven of its members.

The sources indicated that among the dead was a colonel officer, adding that after the bombing, Egyptian fighters targeted areas believed to be sheltering members of armed groups.

It is noteworthy that in February 2018, the Egyptian security forces from the army and police launched a large-scale campaign against those they considered to be armed groups, especially in North Sinai.

Between July 2013 and July 2018, the Arab Organization for Human Rights documented the killing of 4,010 civilians in Sinai, of whom 3,709 had been reported by the army as a result of security confrontations, and the rest were killed indiscriminately, and without opening an investigation into any incident.

About a year ago, Human Rights Watch said that in North Sinai military and police forces were committing serious and widespread violations of civilians in the context of the war against ISIS, also accusing "extremist militants" of "horrific crimes" there.

The human rights organization said that some of those violations that I documented in a two-year investigation entitled "If you are afraid for your life, leave Sinai", amount to a war crime.

The Human Rights Watch report accused security forces of arbitrary arrests of juvenile civilians, of being behind disappearances, of torture and extrajudicial killings, as well as of collective punishment, forced evictions, and air and ground attacks against civilians.

In April 2019, an analysis by Reuters of the Egyptian Ministry of Interior data on communication sites or published by the official Middle East News Agency for the period from July 1, 2015 to the end of 2018, showed that only six of the 471 suspects remained alive. A man in 108 incidents, meaning that the death toll in it was 98.7%.

The Reuters report added that the similarity was surprising between the Interior Ministry’s statements, and each time the Ministry said that its forces had approached or hidden the terrorist or criminals ’hideout by“ taking all necessary legal measures ”, and the statements said that the terrorists or criminals were shooting and then the security forces responded.