EGYPTIAN POLICE yesterday stepped up security at Christian churches throughout the country following a new year bombing at a Coptic church in Alexandria that killed 21 and wounded 97 people.
In spite of the carnage, Sunday Mass was conducted at the blood-spattered Qiddissin (Saints) church where relatives gathered to mourn the dead.
On Saturday Christians protested in the streets around the church, clashing with local Muslims and police. They accused the government of failing to protect Copts since threats against the community were issued in November by an al-Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq, during the siege of a Chaldean Catholic church in Baghdad where 58 people were killed.
Al-Qaeda has called for attacks on Egypt’s Copts because the church has confined to a convent and kept incommunicado two women said to have converted to Islam to escape abusive priestly husbands. Leading members of the Coptic community have urged the church to allow the women to speak out.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, President Hosni Mubarak said the attack had been committed by “foreign hands” and pledged to “confront terrorism and defeat it”. During the funerals of the slain at a monastery outside Alexandria a church official who attempted to read a statement of condolence from Mr Mubarak was shouted down by some of the 5,000 mourners.
The interior ministry, which is responsible for security, also initially blamed “foreign elements” and instructed investigators to look for evidence of visits to Egypt by possible al-Qaeda figures seeking to recruit local militants to carry out the operation. Two dozen people whose vehicles were parked near the church and the neighbouring mosque were held for questioning but not charged.
Yesterday the police focused on a local group of Muslim radicals said to be inspired by but not linked to al-Qaeda.
Egyptian commentators argued that the aim of such attacks was to precipitate civil war between Egypt’s Muslims and Copts, who account for about 10 per cent of the country’s 80 million people. Antagonism between the communities has been rising in recent years. Last January six Copts and a Muslim police officer were slain in a drive-by shooting at a church in the south and in November a Copt died during protests against the demolition of a Giza church built without permits.
The Coptic church called the Alexandria bombing a “dangerous escalation in sectarian incidents”. Copts accuse the government of discriminating against their community and of exploiting sectarian tensions for political purposes.
The attack was condemned by al-Azhar, the Sunni seat of learning, and the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the country’s secular political parties. Pope Benedict XVI called on world leaders to protect the region’s Christians and US president Barack Obama denounced the bombing as a “barbaric and heinous act”.
The World Council of Churches called for dialogue between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims.
