Alwaght- At least two terrorists on a motorcycle opened fire outside a Coptic church south of Egyptian capital, Cairo on Friday, killing at least nine people in the latest attack on the country’s Christian minority.
The attack happened at the Marmina church in the Helwan City district on the capital’s southern outskirts. The victims include members of the congregation and a police officer killed in a shootout at the security post guarding the building. Several others were wounded.
The Coptic Orthodox church released a statement confirming the attack. “A terrorist attack has targeted the Church of the Martyr Marmina as unknown assailants fired gunshots, killing a person from the security force guarding the church as well as five of the people of the church, in addition to other injured individuals,” it said.
Since the beginning of December, dozens of security forces have been deployed outside the country’s churches, in anticipation of terrorist attacks. Egypt’s Coptic Christians make up about 10% of the country’s 93 million people, and are the largest religious minority in the region.
ISIS Takfiri terrorist group affiliate in Egypt has killed dozens of Christians in church bombings and shootings over the past year, and has threatened further attacks.
It claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a Cairo church in December 2016 and attacks on two churches north of the capital in April. A month later, ISIS gunmen shot dead about 30 Christians south of Cairo as they travelled to a monastery.
The Wahhabi Takfiri terrorists are also believed to have carried out a massacre of Muslim worshippers in Sinai last month, killing more than 300 in an attack on a mosque associated with the Sufi strand of Islam, which ISIS views as heretical.
Wahhabism, sometimes referred to Salafism, is also the official ideology of Saudi Arabia and inspires all Takfiri terrorist groups in the world, including al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra Front, Boko Haram, and al-Shabaab.
