Update: Conflicting reports about drone attack in Sinai

Conflicting reports emerged as news circulated about an Israeli drone firing a missile in North Sinai, south of the Rafah border crossing, killing five militants on Friday.

The report published by the Associated Press added that the missile also reportedly destroyed a rocket launcher that was identified earlier on Thursday. But no confirmation was provided by the Israeli army on the attack. 

The agency, meanwhile, cited Egyptian security officials as saying that the attack was in coordination with the Egyptian side.

However, eyewitnesses in the neighboring areas said that Egyptian choppers were flying over the site around the attack time. 

In the meantime, Egypt's Military spokesperson Ahmad Mohamed Ali denied on his Facebook page any attack by Israeli drones in Sinai. 

"Accounts of Israeli attacks in Egyptian territories and of coordination between Egypt and Israeli on the matter are not true... the Egyptian borders are a red line," he wrote. 

He said meanwhile that two bombings rocked the border area south of Rafah in Sinai on Friday. The bombings took place at the international border signs 10 and 11, three kilometers west of the borderline, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported. Ali added that the Armed Forces have deployed in the area to investigate the source of the bombings. 

A military source told the state-run Al-Ahram portal that the military found so far a dead body in the site of the attack. 

The Egyptian military has vowed to target militants in the Sinai peninsula, who have been attacking checkpoints and police stations on almost daily basis since the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi on June 30. 

While Egypt's military presence in Sinai is limited by the terms of the 1979 Camp David peace accords with Israel, exceptional deployments have been negotiated with the latter recently in the context of the battle with militant groups operating in the area. 

If verified, the Israeli drone attack in Sinai would not be the first. In 2012, Israeli media reported an attack by a drone that targeted a militant in the Sinai peninsula in coordination with the Egyptian army that was conducting operations in the area back then as well.