Eight killed in attack on bus carrying Christians
CAIRO » Gunmen said to be from the Islamic State opened fire on a bus carrying worshippers on a visit to a remote Coptic Christian monastery in upper Egypt on Friday, killing at least eight and wounding 14, said a top religious leader and local officials.
“Terrorists opened fire on a bus carrying people,” Coptic Christian Archbishop Makarious of Minya, a town roughly 150 miles south of Cairo, said by phone. The pilgrims, said community leaders, were on a visit to Saint Samuel the Confessor Monastery in a remote patch of Egypt’s western desert.
On Friday evening, Egypt’s Islamic State affiliate, which has vowed to target the nation’s minority Coptic Christians, claimed responsibility for the attack through its Amaq news service.
It was the first attack claimed by the militant group this year outside of the northern Sinai, where it is fighting Egyptian security forces.
Friday’s violence comes more than a year after a similar assault on Christian pilgrims traveling to the same monastery. In May 2017, gunmen attacked buses carrying worshippers, leaving at least 28 people dead.
Since December, when the last major assault on Christians took place, there has been a relative lull in the targeting of the Coptic community. Friday’s attack, many fear, could signal the launch of another deadly campaign by the Islamic State against Christians.
President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi sought to allay the concerns of a community that has staunchly supported him, even as they have been under attack by Islamist extremists for the past two years.
The death toll could have been much higher. There were several vehicles carrying Christian pilgrims, but the militants targeted two buses, said Bishop Aghathon Tala’at, a Christian community leader.
One bus escaped when its driver swerved onto another road. But the second bus, carrying at least 20 passengers, was stopped by the militants, who were in two SUVs, Tala’at said by phone.
“A number of masked men got them out, took the mobile phones of the passengers and then shot all the men dead,” said Tala’at.