Al-Arish, Egypt  - In two separate incidents, Egyptian security forces Wednesday found an estimated 900 kilograms of explosives in the Sinai peninsula and arrested three Palestinians for entering Egypt illegally, police said.

The explosives, which were discovered in the Jafjafa region of central Sinai, included 50 kilograms of TNT and 18 mobile phones that could have been used to detonate the explosives remotely, a source in Egypt's Interior Ministry told German Press Agency dpa, on condition of anonymity.

Police were reportedly combing the area, looking for other caches of weapons or explosives.

In an apparently unrelated incident, security forces in northern Sinai arrested three Palestinian men they said had entered Egypt illegally by passing through smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian- Gaza border at the divided town of Rafah, police said.

The men were apprehended in the northern Sinai town of al-Sheikh Zuweid, not far from Rafah, police said.

Egypt has come under intense international pressure, particularly from Israel and the United States, to end weapons smuggling from the Sinai peninsula into the Gaza Strip. (dpa)