CAIRO (Agencies)
Clashes erupted on Thursday as thousands of Coptic Christians in
a southern Egyptian village gathered to bury six of their number
gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve by men believed to be Muslims,
security officials said.
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked
pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and
a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged
from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the
proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to
it.
Riots
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine
more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official
said.
The wounded were evacuated to hospital in the nearby governorate of
Sohag.
An estimated 5,000 Copts attended Thursday's funeral in Nagaa
Hammadi, 40 miles (65 kilometers) from the popular tourist city of
Luxor.
Police said a group of protesters stoned cars as the dead were
buried, and police responded with tear gas. The demonstrators
chanted: "With our spirit and blood, we will sacrifice ourselves
for the Cross."
They said Copts earlier stoned police cars and the hospital where
the bodies of the six dead were held before the service, chanting:
"No to repression."
An initial investigation reported that the gunmen opened fire as
they sped along the street, killing and wounding people over a
distance of 400 meters.
As the car headed out of town the gunmen fired at a convent which
also housed the bishop's offices before fleeing to a rural area
near the town in Qena governorate, 700 kilometers (435 miles) south
of Cairo.
Copts celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7 along with many other Orthodox
communities around the world.
Shooter's identity
Bishop Kirilos told AFP on Thursday that he saw gunmen spraying
worshippers with automatic gunfire outside the archbishopric after
the mass ended the previous night.
"We concluded the mass at 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) and I was heading to
the bishopric when I saw a man, in a car, open fire with an
automatic rifle at Copts who were walking past the building,"
Kirilos said in a phone interview.
"The gunman then continued to fire on Copts in the streets of the
town," he said.
Witnesses, cited by local officials, earlier said the main gunman
is a Muslim wanted by police and linked the shooting to the
abduction of a 12-year-old Muslim girl in November who was
allegedly raped by a Coptic youth.
"The first elements of the investigation, based on testimony of
people on the ground, indicate that the main shooter is a town
resident identified as Mohammed Ahmed Hussein, who is wanted by the
police," one official said.
Kirilos also told AFP that for the past week some of his
parishioners had received cell phone hate calls and threats
alleging that Muslims "will avenge the rape of the girl during the
Christmas celebrations."
Copts, who represent roughly 10 percent of Egypt's
80-million-strong population, are the largest Christian community
in the Middle East, but they frequently complain of discrimination,
harassment and sectarian attacks.
In November, hundreds of Muslim protesters torched Christian-owned
shops in the town of Farshut, near Nagaa Hammadi, and attacked a
police station where they believed the suspected rapist was being
held.
It was latest in a wave of sectarian tension between Muslims and
Egypt's Copts.