Christians in Egypt prepare to bury their dead after an attack
Christians in Egypt prepare to bury their dead after an attack
Coptic Christians in the Egyptian city of Minya prepared to bury their dead on Saturday, a day after militants ambushed three buses carrying Christian pilgrims to a remote monastery in the desert, killing seven people and wounding 19.
During a funeral, a priest and members of the congregation prayed and sang on a row of white coffins. All but one of those killed were members of the same family, according to a list of the names of the victims reported by the church, which said that a boy and a girl, aged 15 and 12 respectively, were among the dead.
The local branch of the Islamic State group, which leads the militants fighting the security forces in the Sinai peninsula, was responsible for the attack on the south of Cairo in a statement. He said the attack was a revenge for the imprisonment by the Egyptian authorities of "our sister breeds" without giving further details.
The IS affiliate claimed that 13 Christians were killed and another 18 wounded, but it was not possible to independently verify the claim or reconcile the discrepancy in the number of deaths and injuries that the group and the church gave.
The attack is likely to cast a dark shadow on one of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's masterpieces, the World Youth Forum, to be inaugurated on Saturday in Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea. attract thousands of local and foreign youth to discuss upcoming projects, with the 63-year-old Egyptian leader taking center stage.
The Islamic State has repeatedly pledged to persecute the Christians of Egypt as punishment for their support of el-Sissi. As defense minister, el-Sissi led the military destitution of an Islamist president in 2013, whose one-year government proved decisive. He has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks against Christians that date back to December 2016.
El-Sissi, who has made economics and security his top priorities since taking office in 2014, wrote on his Twitter account that Friday's attack was designed to damage the "solid fabric of the nation" and promised to continue fighting against terrorism. Later, he offered his condolences when he spoke on the phone with Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christians of Egypt and a close ally of Sissi.
In a grim message, Tawadros said in a video posted by the church that the latest attack would only make Christians stronger.
"I think this is a terrorist act that goes to Egypt through playing the letter of the Copts," said Begemy Nassem Nasr, a priest at St. Mary's Church in Minya. "We know that (...) President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is the host of the youth forum and they wanted to embarrass him."
The attack on Friday is the second to attack pilgrims heading to the monastery of San Samuel Confessor in so many years, which indicates that security measures in force since then are inadequate or relaxed. The previous attack in May 2017 left almost 30 dead. It is also the last IS to attack Christians in the churches of Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Tanta in the Nile Delta, north of the capital.
These attacks left at least 100 people dead and led to greater security in Christian places of worship and facilities linked to the Church. They have also underlined the vulnerability of minority Christians in a country where many Muslims have become religiously conservative since the 1970s.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said Friday's attackers used secondary dirt roads to get to the buses carrying the pilgrims, who were near the monastery at the time of the attack. Only pilgrims have been allowed on the main road leading to the monastery since last year's attack.
The Interior Ministry said only one bus was attacked, but the church's latest statement said that three buses were attacked and the death toll was 7 and the number of injuries was 19, including two in critical condition.
The Interior Ministry said the police were chasing the attackers, who fled the scene.
Christians in Egypt, who make up about 10 percent of the country's 100 million people, complain about discrimination in the Muslim-majority country. Christian activists say that the church's alliance with el-Sissi has offered the former community a measure of protection, but failed to end the frequent acts of discrimination that turn into violence against Christians, especially in rural Egypt .
In Minya, the scene of Friday's attack, Christians make up the highest percentage of the population, around 35 percent, of any Egyptian province. It is also in Minya, where most acts of violence are carried out, such as attacks on churches and Christian homes and businesses.
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Hendawi reported from Cairo.
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