IS attack on Christian pilgrims in Egypt kills 7, wounds 19

MINYA, Egypt (AP) — Islamic militants on Friday ambushed three buses carrying Christian pilgrims on their way to a remote desert monastery south of the Egyptian capital of Cairo, killing seven and wounding 19, according to the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Interior Ministry. 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 affiliate which spearheads militants fighting security forces in the Sinai Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, according to SITE, a U.S.-based group that monitors and translates militants' statements. An Islamic State affiliate based in the restive northern Sinai Peninsula claimed the attack, calling it revenge for the imprisonment of "our chaste sisters," without elaborating. The IS affiliate claimed that 13 Christians were 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. They are misled because all the grief, pain and frustration they cause will achieve absolutely nothing.”

The attack is likely to cast a dark shadow on one of el-Sissi’s showpieces — the World Youth Forum — which opens Saturday 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-year-old leader taking center stage. The Islamic State has repeatedly vowed to go after Egypt's Christians as punishment for their support of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Daesh has repeatedly targeted Egypt’s Christians as punishment for their support of el-Sissi, who led the military’s 2013 ouster of an elected but divisive Islamist president. Daesh has also targeted Christian churches with a series of suicide bombings since December 2016 that have killed scores of people. El-Sissi, who has made the economy and security his top priorities since taking office in 2014, wrote on his Twitter account that Friday's attack was designed to harm the "nation's solid fabric" and pledged to continue fighting terrorism. He later offered his condolences when he spoke by telephone with Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt’s Orthodox Christians and a close ally of the president. In a somber message of his own, Tawadros said in a video clip released by the church that the latest attack would only make the Christians stronger. Begemy Nassem Nasr, the priest of the church of St. Mary in the central Egyptian city of Minya, near where the attack took place, suggested it was meant to embarrass el-Sissi as he hosted the youth forum. “We know that … President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is hosting the youth forum and they meant to embarrass him.”

Embarrassingly, Friday’s attack is the second to target pilgrims heading to the St. Samuel the Confessor monastery in as many years, indicating that security measures put in place since then are either inadequate or have become lax. The previous attack in May 2017 left nearly 30 people dead. Previous ones targeted churches packed with worshippers in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Tanta in the Nile Delta north of the capital, leaving at least 100 people dead. The attacks led to tighter security around Christian places of worship and Church-linked facilities, where metal detectors and armed police are routinely deployed. They have also underlined the vulnerability of minority Christians in a country where many Muslims have since the 1970s grown religiously conservative and less tolerant of non-Muslims. The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said Friday's attackers used secondary dirt roads to reach the buses carrying the pilgrims, who were near the monastery at the time of the attack. Only pilgrims have been allowed on the main road leading to the monastery since last year's attack. The Interior Ministry said police were pursuing the attackers, who fled the scene. Egypt's Christians, who account for some 10 percent of the country's 100 million people, complain of discrimination in the Muslim majority country. Christian activists say the church's alliance with el-Sissi has offered the ancient community a measure of protection but failed to end frequent acts of discrimination that boil over into violence against Christians, especially in rural Egypt. In Minya, the scene of Friday's attack, Christians constitute the highest percentage of the population — about 35 percent — of any Egyptian province. It's also in Minya where most acts of violence, like attacks on churches and Christian homes and businesses, take place.
Egyptian Police kill 19 Islamist militants accused of involvement in an attack on Coptic Christians in central Egypt two days ago.