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Christians in shock after deadly attack on Coptic Church in Egypt

Extremist militants have claimed several attacks on Egypt's large Christian minority in recent years

December 31, 2017 at 2:06 pm

At an hour that Sama’an Farag usually spends leisurely sipping his morning tea, the doorman at the Mar Mina Coptic Church near Cairo found himself springing up to close the doors upon hearing gunshots and the sound of ricocheting bullets.

Inside, dozens of children at Sunday school, held on Friday morning to coincide with Egypt’s weekend, were rushed upstairs out of the range of the gunfire.

Churchkeeper Saad Saeed:

Imagine children from kindergarten to high school, they were all still inside the church. God forbid if he (gunman) had entered the church – there would have been many more victims

The gunman fired at the church and a neighbouring Christian-owned shop on Friday, killing at least 11 people, security and church sources said. The attack was later claimed by Daesh militants via their news agency Amaq.

“I heard that there was a paralysed man who was killed with his wife. We felt sad for him, the other people, and the policeman who was killed,” Farag said.

The police conscript who had stood alongside Farag and the other doormen behind the massive gates was killed by gunfire.

Read: Egypt security forces kill 3 suspected militants, arrest 10 others

Extremist militants have claimed several attacks on Egypt’s large Christian minority in recent years, including two bombings on Palm Sunday in April and a blast at Cairo’s largest Coptic cathedral in December 2016 that killed 28 people.

An insurgency in Egypt’s rugged Sinai Peninsula has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen since the mid-2013 – although no official death toll has been released to date. But in recent months, attacks have increasingly moved to the mainland, targeting Coptic Christians as well as security officers and checkpoints in and around major Egyptian cities.

Police have stepped up security measures around churches ahead of Coptic Christmas celebrations on January 7, deploying officers outside Christian places of worship and setting up metal detectors at some of the bigger churches.

This opinion piece was syndicated from Reuters.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.