A suspected militant was killed on Wednesday in an explosion during a raid by Egyptian police on an apartment in northern Cairo, a police official said.

The police came under fire when they tried to enter the apartment, and then the man appeared to detonate an explosive that set fire to three neighbouring apartments.

The operation followed a tip-off that a militant was hiding out in the apartment, which had been converted into a gym, the official said.

Police found a number of rocket-propelled grenades and three rifles inside, he added.

Egypt's police force has been conducting sweeping operations against heavily armed criminals nationwide and also Islamist militants in the Sinai peninsula.

Radical Islamists from Egypt's Nile Delta region are believed to have joined forces with Bedouin militants in Sinai in attacks that targeted Egyptian security forces and Israel.

In August, an attack on an army outpost in Sinai that killed 16 soldiers prompted the largest military operation in the peninsula since Israel handed the territory back to Egypt following a 1979 peace agreement.