"Military and police forces foiled a terrorist plot that targeted a checkpoint with a bomb-laced truck in the North Sinai city of al-Arish on Friday," army spokesman Mohamed Samir said in a Facebook statement.

"The truck was destroyed and the driver and another terrorist were killed," Samir said.

The spokesman said that army and police forces also killed two others on motorbikes, while monitoring the checkpoint.

Six were killed on Friday in a security raid on a house in the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid, according to Samir.

In a separate operation, security forces killed a militant while trying to escape on a motorcycle in Sheikh Zuweid, the spokesman said.

The army spokesman said that five had been killed and four others arrested in security raids in Al-Arish and Sheikh Zuweid on Thursday.

Egypt has been cracking down on militants in Sinai, which shares borders with Israel and the Gaza Strip, for more than a year now amid a rise in militant attacks against army personnel, policemen and security sites, the most recent of which claimed the lives 31 troops on October 24.