At least 24 Egyptian policemen have been killed in an ambush attack in the Sinai peninsula.
Medical sources and officials said the police were in two buses which came under attack from armed men close to the town of Rafah on the Gaza border.
Three policemen were also reported to have been injured in the blast.
The military recently intensified a crackdown against militants in Sinai, where attacks have surged since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Analysis
The northern Sinai has become one of the most dangerous places in Egypt since 2011.
The area is a crossroads for local Bedouin smuggling and criminal gangs, Egyptian jihadists and militants with links to the adjacent Gaza strip. Kidnapping, the smuggling of guns and explosives, and attacks on Egypt's security forces have proliferated since the end of President Mubarak's military rule in 2011.
The Sinai Peninsula, scene of heavy fighting in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, is host to an international observer force of soldiers deployed to monitor the peace since the 1979 treaty with Israel but they have neither the mandate nor the capacity to stop the Sinai descending into lawlessness.
So far, the tourist resort of Sharm El Sheikh [at the southern tip of the Sinai] has remained immune to the post-Arab Spring violence.
It is too early to tell if this attack is in direct response to events in Cairo and other mainland Egyptian cities and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Egyptian deployments in the peninsula are subject to the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
There were conflicting reports about how Monday's attack unfolded.
Security sources quoted by the Associated Press news agency say four armed men stopped the buses and forced the police to get out before shooting them.
But other reports spoke of rocket-propelled grenades being fired at the buses.
The Rafah border post into Gaza was closed in response to the attack and security increased at checkpoints on the peninsula.
EU concernEgypt's interim, military-backed leaders have declared a state of emergency amid the nationwide unrest which has followed the ousting of Islamist Mohammed Morsi as president on 3 July.
A night-time curfew is in place in the capital, Cairo, and many other provinces.
More than 830 people, including 70 police and soldiers, are reported to have been killed since Wednesday, when the army cleared protest camps set up by Morsi supporters, many of them members of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
Egypt's recent violence
- Wednesday 14 August - official figures say 638 people died as security forces shut down pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo
- Thursday 15 August - police authorised to use live fire to protect government buildings
- Friday 16 August - 173 people are killed in clashes around Cairo's Ramses Square, during a "day of anger" over Wednesday's army operation
- Saturday 17 August - security forces lay siege to and forcibly clear the al-Fath mosque in Cairo, being used as a pro-Morsi base and hospital.
- Sunday 18 August - 36 Islamist prisoners die as they are being transported to a prison outside Cairo.
On Sunday night, 36 Islamists died as they were being transported to a prison outside Cairo.
Government and military officials said they had suffocated in the back of a prison van from the effects of tear gas, which was fired when the prisoners rioted.
But there were other reports of gunfire.
The Brotherhood said the interior ministry had "decided to betray its trust and ignore its role" and had killed the detainees "for their opposition to the bloody military council".
It said the "heinous crime shows the total disregard of the right to life by these murderous fascist thugs" and raised concerns about the safety of the hundreds of pro-Morsi activists now in detention.
European Union ambassadors are holding emergency talks in Brussels to discuss the EU's response to the continuing crisis.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy have said the EU "will urgently review in the coming days its relations with Egypt".
In a joint statement on Sunday, they expressed regret that international efforts to find a peaceful way forward in Egypt were abandoned and a "course of confrontation" instead pursued.
"The calls for democracy and fundamental freedoms from the Egyptian population cannot be disregarded, much less washed away in blood," they said.
Mr Morsi's supporters say the removal of Egypt's first freely elected president was a coup.
However the interim government says the Muslim Brotherhood has carried out a campaign of terror since he was overthrown.
The head of the armed forces, Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, has warned the military will not tolerate unrest.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Hosni Mubarak has said he expects the former leader to be released from prison within the next two days.
However the legal situation is unclear.
Mubarak is facing a retrial for corruption and complicity in the deaths of protesters during the 2011 uprising.
Lawyer Fareed al-Dib told the BBC he had been cleared of one of the corruption charges and they were waiting for the court to check whether he still had to be held in custody on other charges.
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