26th May, 2017
Gunmen attacked a group of Coptic Christians as they were driving to a monastery south of Cairo on Friday, killing 23 and wounding 25, the governor of Egypt’s Minya province, Essam al-Bedaiwy, said.
The group was traveling in two buses and a small truck in Minya province, which is home to a sizeable Christian minority, the sources said.
Provincial governor Essam al-Bedaiwy said earlier that 23 people had been killed and 25 wounded.
Eyewitnesses said the Copts were attacked as they were going to pray at the monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in the western part of the province.
They said masked men stopped the vehicles on a road leading to the monastery and opened fire.
Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 92 million, have been the subject of a series of deadly attacks in recent months.
About 70 have been killed in bomb attacks on churches in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Tanta since December.
Those attacks were claimed by Islamic State.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday’s attack.
NAN reports that two suicide bombings killed 44 people in Coptic churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, promptly declared a three-month state of emergency.