CAIRO: Gunmen killed three policemen in Egypt’s volatile Sinai Peninsula on Monday, security sources said, and a militant group released a video of an earlier drive-by shooting of an army colonel.

Security sources confirmed that gunmen had killed the colonel, identified as Mohamed Al-Komi, on Aug. 14 on a desert highway near the Suez Canal city of Ismailia.

The Sinai has become a major security headache for the Egyptian authorities since the army overthrew elected President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July.

His overthrow has plunged the most populous Arab nation into political crisis. A security crackdown on the Brotherhood has raised fears that militants will hit back with violence. In the latest bloodshed, gunmen killed two policemen as they ate breakfast outside a police station in the city of El-Arish in North Sinai. In a separate attack, a police officer walking in the city was shot in the head and chest and killed.

Gunmen also killed a civilian in the nearby town of Sheikh Zuwaid.

The Sinai-based Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis group claimed responsibility for a failed suicide bombing in Cairo on the interior minister this month.