CAIRO, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian police killed five terrorists Monday in a shoot-out in Upper Egypt's Sohag governorate, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Acting on a tip-off, a group of terrorist elements took their hide in a mountainous area on the Assiut-Sohag highway, the interior ministry said in a statement.

The security forces headed to the area to arrest them and when it approached the group's hiding place, the terrorists started firing at the troops forcing them to fight back, according to the ministry.

Machine guns, bullets and means of subsistence were seized in possession of the killed terrorists, according to the statement.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terrorism that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood group.

Terror attacks have been centered in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic minority as well, with most of them claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State militant group.

The Egyptian military and police have also killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the country's anti-terror war.