SUSPECTED Islamist militants have attacked a church in southern Egypt, killing 10 Christians and seriously wounding at least four more in the first attack of its kind in three years.
The victims, mostly young people, were at their weekly meeting inside St George's Coptic church in Fekreya, a village close to Abu Qurqas in Minya province, about 240 km south of Cairo, when gunmen burst in and sprayed them with bullets.
Nine of the dead - two young women and seven men - were buried yesterday. According to a local nun, as many as 5,000 people, including the provincial governor and a number of Muslims, attended the funeral.
Although nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, the Interior Ministry suspects the gunmen were members of the militant Gama'a alIslamiyya, or Islamic Group, which has been fighting the government since 1992. If so, it is the first time the group has actually attacked a church and killed worshippers.
The last comparable incident took place three years ago when gunmen killed two priests and five other Copts outside the Deir ElMuharraq monastery in Assuit province.
Coptic Christians comprise between six and 10 per cent of Egypt's population and have been occasional targets of the militants. When the Gama'a first began its armed struggle, a number of Christian jewellers in Cairo and other urban areas were killed in extortion or robbery attempts to finance Gam'a's activities.
Tough security measures later depleted the ranks of the Gama'a and largely confined its activities to hit and run attacks on policemen in Minya - with a few spectacular exceptions such as the shooting of 17 Greek tourists in Cairo last April.
But the Gama'a has continued to mount sporadic attacks on Christian villagers in the south. In some cases the victims have been suspected police informers but other attacks appeared to have purely sectarian motives.
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