Such incidents at sea are rare, but Egypt is battling an increasingly brazen Islamist insurgency in the Sinai peninsula, which lies between Israel, the Gaza Strip and the Suez Canal.
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The Egyptian military said in an early statement that a navy vessel had caught fire just off the coast of Sinai following a clash with militants.
The IS affiliate released pictures of what it said was a guided anti-tank rocket attack on the vessel off the coast of northern Sinai, in Rafah, an area bordering Israel and the Gaza strip.
The Islamic State jihadist group said it carried out a missile attack that set ablaze an Egyptian navy vessel in the eastern Mediterranean on Thursday, SITE Intelligence Group reported.
The photos show a large explosion engulfing most of the ship and black smoke rising from it afterwards.
Egyptian military spokesman Brig.
Witnesses in Gaza told Agence France-Presse that they had heard an explosion when the vessel was around two miles from the coast.
Eyad Baba-AP An Egyptian navy vessel hoses down another, which caught fire on the Mediterranean Sea after an exchange of gunshots with militants on July 16, 2015.
The vessel, according to the security officials, routinely patrols Egyptian territorial waters and has frequently been used to transport army and police personnel to mainland Egypt, the officials said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. In another attack claimed by the Daesh group, Egypt’s state prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, was assassinated in Cairo by a auto bomb in late June.
He said the explosives-laden vehicle was destroyed and its driver killed.
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The Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, Egypt’s most active militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement shared by its supporters on Twitter.
