Islamic terrorists on Friday ambushed a bus carrying Christian pilgrims on their way to a remote desert monastery south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, killing at least seven and wounding 12, the Interior Ministry said.
Church spokesman Bouls Halim said the death toll in Friday’s attack was likely to rise. Local church officials in Minya province where the attack took place, put the death toll at 10, but the higher figure could not be confirmed.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State, who have for years been fighting security forces in the Sinai Peninsula and along Egypt’s porous desert border with Libya.
Friday’s attack is the second to target pilgrims heading to the St. Samuel the Confessor monastery in as many years. The previous attack in May 2017 left nearly 30 people dead.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said the attackers used secondary dirt roads to reach the bus carrying the pilgrims, who were near the monastery at the time of the attack.
The attack last year was the latest in a deadly series that targeted churches in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Tanta in the Nile Delta north of the capital. Those attacks, all claimed by the Islamic State group, left at least a 100 people dead and led to tighter security around Christian places of worship and other Church-linked facilities.
Egypt’s Christians, who account for some 10 percent of the country’s 100 million people, complain of discrimination in the Muslim majority country. The Church allied itself with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi when he, as defense minister, led the 2013 military overthrow of an Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi.
Hundreds of Egyptian Coptic Christians gathered Saturday for a funeral service south of Cairo to bid farewell to six of seven people killed the previous day when militants ambushed three buses carrying pilgrims on their way to a remote desert monastery.
The service at Prince Tadros church in the city of Minya was held amid tight security and presided over by Minya’s top cleric, Anba Makarios. He and members of the congregation prayed and chanted over a row of six white coffins.
Relatives of the victims cried and held each other for support.
All but one of those killed were members of the same family, according to a list of the victims’ names released by the church, which said a boy and a girl, ages 15 and 12 respectively, were among the dead. A total of 19 were wounded in the attack, according to the Coptic Orthodox Church.
The local Islamic State group affiliate, which spearheads militants fighting security forces in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, claimed responsibility for the attack south of Cairo. It said the attack was revenge for the imprisonment by Egyptian authorities of “our chaste sisters” but did not elaborate.
The IS affiliate claimed that 13 Christians were killed and another 18 wounded, but it was not immediately possible to independently verify the claim or reconcile the discrepancy in the number of dead and wounded given by the group and the church.
The Islamic State has repeatedly vowed to go after Egypt’s Christians as punishment for their support of el-Sissi. As defense minister, el-Sissi led the military’s 2013 ouster of an Islamist president, whose one-year rule proved divisive. The group has claimed responsibility for a string of deadly attacks on Christians dating back to December 2016.
El-Sissi, who has made security among his top priorities since taking office in 2014, wrote on his Twitter account that Friday’s attack was designed to harm the “nation’s solid fabric” and pledged to continue fighting terrorism. He later offered his condolences when he spoke by telephone with Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt’s Orthodox Christians and a close el-Sissi ally.
In a somber message of his own, Tawadros said in a video clip released by the church that the latest attack would only make the Christians stronger.
“I think that this is a terrorist act which is targeting Egypt through playing the card of the Copts,” said Begemy Nassem Nasr, priest of the church of St. Mary in Minya. “We know that … President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is hosting the youth forum and they meant to embarrass him.”
It was the latest in a string of IS assaults against Christians. Previous ones targeted churches packed with worshippers in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Tanta in the Nile Delta north of the capital, leaving at least 100 people dead.
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