Posted on 01/07/2010 10:27:08 AM PST by NYer
At least six Coptic Christians and a security official have been killed in a drive-by shooting outside a church in southern Egypt, officials say.
The shooting came as worshippers left the church in Naj Hammadi after a midnight mass on Coptic Christmas Eve.
A car pulled up and gunfire was sprayed into the crowd.
Officials say they suspect the attack is in revenge for the rape of a 12-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man in the town in November.
There were five days of riots in the town, with Christian properties torched and damaged, following the rape.
Police said the chief attacker in Wednesday's shooting had been identified but no arrests had yet been made.
Tensions in the area are said to be high, with reports of clashes. Since the 1970s, when Islamic extremism began to increase in Egypt, there have been sporadic clashes between Muslims and members of the Coptic Christian minority.
The most serious cases are usually in poor, rural areas where the trigger is often a dispute over land or women, which spills over into sectarian violence. Whole communities can become involved.
Local authorities' handling of such cases is often criticised. Police are accused of delaying their response to reports of fighting and then simply arresting equal numbers of individuals from each faith. Sometimes criminal investigations are dropped in favour of informal reconciliation meetings.
The church's Bishop Kirollos said there had been threats in the days leading up to the Christmas Eve service - a reason he decided to end his mass an hour earlier than normal.
"For days, I had expected something to happen on Christmas Eve," he told the Associated Press.
He said he left the church minutes before the attack.
"A driving car swerved near me, so I took the back door," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Prayers for our Orthodox brethren.
Muslims are filthy animals.
More hate and evil from Islam....The Faith of Hate and the Cult of Insanity....
This was a direct attack on Coptic Christians during a religious holiday....as was the Christmas attempt by that Islamic Terrorist on the flight to Detroit.
Obama and his minions in the Liberal Globalist Media support religious intolerance
Revenge killings of Christians? How much “revenge” is enough?
Radical Islam is a murderous death cult.
Moderate Islam is its Trojan Horse in the West
I wonder if any of the AFP/CFPA people found their way onto free republic. I had no idea it was disbanded last april... yet another organization spreading the truth about the evil and vile inhumanity of islam.
Flag to this story.
BUMP.
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