Coptic Christians in the Egyptian town of Minya prepared to bury their dead on Saturday, a day after militants ambushed three buses carrying Christian pilgrims on their way to a remote desert monastery, killing seven and wounding 19. CAIRO: Gunmen attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christians in central Egypt on Friday, killing at least seven in the latest attack on a religious minority repeatedly targeted by militants. The gunmen "killed seven people and wounded 14, all of whom are in the in Beni Mazar" around 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of Cairo, said Makarios of

"The attack took place on the road" back from the Saint Samuel monastery, he added, as the bus was heading to the city of

A security source confirmed that seven people were killed in the attack, but put the number of wounded at seven. Egyptian authorities have also convicted jihadists for their role in attacks against Last month an Egyptian military court sentenced 17 people to death over the suicide attacks against churches in 2016 and 2017.

have long complained of discrimination in and IS is not the only group to have launched sectarian attacks against the community. IS also killed more than 40 people in twin church bombings in April 2017, and an IS gunman last December killed nine people in an attack on a church in a south Cairo suburb. Egypt's army launched a major offensive in February 2018 against IS in the Sinai Peninsula, where the group has waged a deadly insurgency since the fall of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, killing hundreds of soldiers and policemen. As Egypt's Christians reeled from the latest attack, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called Coptic Pope Tawadros II to offer his condolences and led a minute of silence at a youth forum he was attending. Copts, a Christian minority that make up 10 percent of Egypt's 96 million people, have in recent years been repeatedly targeted by the Islamic State jihadist group. Copts have long complained of discrimination in Egypt and IS is not the only group to have launched sectarian attacks against the community.
An attack on a bus carrying Copts from Sohag Governorate to the Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in Egypt kills seven people and injures several others.