Egypt on edge as Copts bury the dead
Egyptian Coptic Christians were burying their dead on Monday after Daesh suicide bombers killed at least 45 people in attacks on Palm Sunday services in two cities, as a state of emergency went into effect amid fears of further violence.
Daesh named the two attackers, whose noms de guerre suggest they were Egyptians.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis will visit Egypt as planned this month despite the weekend, a Vatican official said.
“There is no doubt the Holy Father will maintain his offer to go to Egypt” on April 28 and 29, Monsignor Angelo Becciu, the Holy See’s number three, said in an interview published in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Monday.
cairo — Egypt prepared to impose a state of emergency on Monday after bombings killed dozens at two churches in the deadliest attacks in recent memory on the country’s Coptic Christian minority.
President Abdel Fattah El Sisi announced the three-month period, which will vastly increase the powers of Egypt’s security forces, after Daesh claimed the twin bombings that struck worshippers as they celebrated Palm Sunday mass.
In a defiant speech, he warned the war against jihadists “will be long and painful” after he had ordered the army to protect “vital infrastructure” and increase security along Egypt’s borders.
At the scene of the Alexandria blast on Monday investigators combed through the wreckage, taking pictures of the debris.
A handful of women, dressed in black, showed their identification papers to guards before entering the church.
“I’m so sad, I cannot speak,” said one mourner, a woman in her 40s.
Lawmakers said the state of emergency — Egypt’s first since widespread unrest in 2013 — would help the country face down a menacing jihadist insurgency.
It will allow police to detain for 45 days suspects “known to the se- curity services but for whom there is not enough evidence to go to trial,” said parliament member Yehia Kedwani.
The state of emergency still technically needs the approval of parliament — a formality given the number of pro-Sisi delegates. Daesh has been waging a deadly insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula and has claimed scores of attacks on security forces there.
But it has been unable to seize population centres, unlike its early gains in Iraq and Syria, and it has also lost top militants to Egyptian military strikes in recent months.
Analysts say Sunday’s bombings suggest the group is lashing out as it finds itself under increasing pressure in other countries. —