At least six Egyptians were killed on Monday in a string of attacks carried out against police station and army checkpoints in the Sinai Peninsula. The attacks, conducted by Islamists, added up to the single worst day of violence this month:

At least 10 attacks were carried out by Islamist militants against police stations and security and army checkpoints in Sinai’s two main northern cities of Rafah and El-Arish near Egypt’s borders with Israel and the Gaza strip . Two civilians, two army officers and two policemen were killed, Reuters reported.

Over the weekend gunmen killed four security officials in separate attacks in the northern city of el-Arish. Earlier Monday at least six people – five policemen and one civilian – were wounded in an attack on a security camp near Rafah.

The violence comes amid rumors of a large scale Egyptian military campaign in the Sinai. Violence in the increasingly anarchic territory has spiked since the removal from power of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi earlier this month, and Egyptian security officials have linked the uptick to supporters of Morsi and his Islamist Muslim Brotherhood-linked government.

The Egyptian army blames the Iran-backed terror group Hamas for the much of the violence, accusing the group of maintaining tunnels between the Sinai and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip through which jihadists move personnel and weapons.

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