Three suspects in a drive-by shooting that killed six Christians in southern Egypt surrendered to police Friday, while authorities faced mounting pressure to resolve the sectarian dispute in the tense community reeling from a bloody Coptic Christmas Eve attack.
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Egyptian security forces had blanketed the area between the village of Farshout and the town of Nag Hamadi, where the slayings occurred late Wednesday, blocking suspects from fleeing into nearby desert mountains, the state MENA news agency reported.
The troops then flushed the men out of dense sugar cane fields they were hiding in, and forced them to surrender, the report said.
In the Wednesday shooting in Nag Hamadi, just 64 kilometers north of the famed Luxor ruins, gunmen had opened fire on a crowd of worshippers leaving a church after mass for Coptic Orthodox Christmas Eve. Six Christians and a Muslim security guard died in a hale of bullets.
The attack was the worst to target Christians in nearly a decade, and shocked Egypt’s Christian community. Copts, who make up most of 8 million Christians in this country of 80 million people, celebrate Christmas according to the old Julian calendar, on Jan. 7.
The attack also underscored the government’s failure to address chronic sectarian strains in a society where religious radicalism is gaining ground. Egypt’s Interior Ministry immediately called the shooting a revenge for the alleged November rape of a 12-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man in the same town.
Tags: Christian Persecution, News