Christians in Egypt prepare to bury dead after attack
MINYA (AP) — Coptic Christians in the Egyptian town of Minya prepared to bury their dead yesterday, a day after militants ambushed three buses carrying Christian pilgrims on their way to a remote desert monastery, killing seven and wounding 19.
A priest and members of a Christian congregation prayed and chanted over a row of white coffins ahead of a funeral service for the dead. 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.
The local Islamic State group affiliate, which spearheads militants fighting security forces in the Sinai Peninsula, claimed responsibility for the attack south of Cairo in a statement. It said the attack was revenge for the imprisonment by Egyptian authorities of “our chaste sisters’’ without elaborating.
The IS affiliate claimed that 13 Christians 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 attack was likely to cast a dark shadow on one of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s showpieces — the World Youth Forum — which opens today in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and hopes to draw thousands of local and foreign youth to discuss upcoming projects, with Egypt’s 63-yearold leader taking center stage.