Gunmen
attacked a group of Coptic Christians traveling to a monastery in southern
Egypt on Friday, killing 28 people and wounding 25 others, and many children
were
among the victims, Health Ministry officials said.
among the victims, Health Ministry officials said.
(To view a
graphic on the Egypt attack location, click: tmsnrt.rs/2qqLS4a)
Eyewitnesses
said masked men opened fire after stopping the Christians, who were traveling
in a bus and other vehicles.
Local
television channels showed a bus apparently raked by gunfire and smeared with
blood. Clothes and shoes could be seen lying in and around the bus.
There was no
immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came on the eve of the
holy month of Ramadan. It followed a series of church bombings claimed by
Islamic State.
President
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called a meeting of security officials, the state news
agency said, and the cabinet said the attackers would not succeed in dividing
the nation.
Muslim
leaders condemned the killings. The grand imam of al-Azhar, Egypt's
1,000-year-old center of Islamic learning, said the attack was intended to
destabilize the country.
"I call
on Egyptians to unite in the face of this brutal terrorism," Ahmed
al-Tayeb said from Germany, where he was on a visit. The Grand Mufti of Egypt,
Shawki Allam, condemned the perpetrators as traitors.
The Coptic
church said it had received news of the killing of its "martyrs" with
pain and sorrow.
The attack
took place on a road leading to the monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in
Minya province, which is home to a sizeable Christian minority. An Interior
Ministry spokesman said the unidentified gunmen had arrived in three
four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Security
forces launched a hunt for the attackers, setting up dozens of checkpoints and
patrols on the desert road.
ISLAMIC
STATE
Coptic
Christians, whose church dates back nearly 2,000 years, make up about 10
percent of Egypt's population of 92 million.
They say
they have long suffered from persecution, but in recent months the frequency of
deadly attacks against them has increased. About 70 have been killed since
December in bombings claimed by IS at churches in the cities of Cairo,
Alexandria and Tanta.
An Islamic
State campaign of murders in North Sinai prompted hundreds of Christians to
flee in February and March.
Copts fear
they will face the same fate as brethren in Iraq and Syria, where Christian
communities have been decimated by wars and Islamic State persecution.
Egypt's
Copts are vocal supporters of Sisi, who has vowed to crush Islamist extremism
and protect Christians. He declared a three-month state of emergency in the
aftermath of the latest church bombings in April.
But many
Christians feel the state either does not take their plight seriously enough or
cannot protect them against determined fanatics.
The
government is fighting insurgents affiliated to Islamic State who have killed
hundreds of police and soldiers in the Sinai peninsula, while also carrying out
attacks elsewhere in the country.
REUTERS
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