Egypt ups security outside churches
Country hopes to restore sense of safety ahead of Easter
CAIRO — Outside of Cairo’s St. Mark’s Cathedral, the seat of the Coptic Orthodox Pope, a dozen high-ranking police officers are stationed on all entrances, searching cars and scanning the area, as security measures are visibly beefed up outside churches before Easter prayers on Sunday.
The usually festive occasion is tainted with fearful apprehension after twin bombings in the cities of Tanta and Alexandria killed 45 people this week at churches on Palm Sunday, which marks the start of the Coptic Christian Holy Week.
The increased security measures on display outside churches across the country are meant to restore a sense of security for Egypt’s Copts amid a war on the embattled minority declared by the Islamist State group, which claimed Sunday’s bombings. However, the enhanced security can do little against the effect of repeated attacks on Coptic churches in recent years.
“No security measure can stop a suicide bomber with jihadist beliefs from blowing up a church,” Coptic engineer Emad Thomas said Wednesday. However, he believes that Copts will attend prayers Sunday as they have continued to go to church despite attacks. “Egypt’s Copts put their trust in God and not in security measures,” he said.
Egypt’s Ministry of Interior announced on Wednesday the identity of the Alexandria church bomber, saying that he belongs to the same terrorist cell that carried out the December bombing of a chapel adjacent to Egypt’s main cathedral. The ministry identified the suicide bomber as Mahmoud Hassan Mubarak Abdallah, a 30-year-old worker at a petroleum company, and published his picture. It also published names and pictures of others identified as fugitive members of the same cell, offering LE100 thousand ($5,510) for leads on their whereabouts. The Health Ministry said six Muslims were among the dead in Alexandria.
Outside of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Cairo’s central downtown area, a military tank is stationed with five soldiers on top — one of the more overt manifestations of President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi’s declaration of a three-month state of emergency.
In the southern city of Assiut, security barriers closed off an area of about 100-meters around large churches. A local security source told the AP that agents will be dispersed ahead of Sunday’s prayers and a special unit will be formed at the security directorate to receive reports about suspicious individuals in the vicinity of churches. A military source said that troops have started patrolling the city and will be stationed across town before Sunday. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media.