Palm Sunday Church Bombing Kills 22 In Egypt

A bomb blast at a church north of Cairo killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens who had gathered for Palm Sunday mass, officials said, in the latest apparent attack on Egypt’s Coptic Christians.

Crucifixes and icons are seen at the heavily damaged Church of the Immaculate Coenception in Qaraqosh (also known as Hamdaniya), some 30 kilometres east of Mosul, on April 9, 2017, as Christians mark the first Palm Sunday event in the town since Iraqi forces recaptured it from Islamic State (IS) group jihadists. Qaraqosh, with an overwhelmingly Christian population of around 50,000 before the jihadists took over the area in August 2014, was the largest Christian town in Iraq.

Some 71 people were wounded in the blast, which struck at a Coptic Church in the Nile Delta City of Tanta, 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Cairo, according to a health ministry toll.

Images broadcast by private television stations showed bloodstains smearing the whitewashed walls of the church next to shredded wooden benches. Palm Sunday is one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar, marking the triumphant entrance of Jesus to Jerusalem.

“The explosion took place in the front rows, near the altar, during the mass,” General Tarek Atiya, the deputy to Egypt’s interior minister in charge of relations with the media, told AFP. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday’s blast.

Copts, who make up about one tenth of Egypt’s population of more than 92 million and who celebrate Easter next weekend, have been targeted by several attacks in recent months. Pope Francis is due to visit Cairo on April 28-29 to show solidarity with Egypt’s Christian community.

Jihadists and Islamists accuse Copts of supporting the military overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, which ushered in a deadly crackdown on his supporters.

In December, a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed 29 worshippers during Sunday mass in Cairo. The bombing of the church within a compound that also holds the seat of the Coptic papacy was the deadliest attack against the minority in recent memory. A spate of jihadist-linked attacks in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula, including the murder of a Copt in the city of El Arish whose house was also burned, have led some Coptic families to flee their homes.

About 250 Christians took refuge in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya after IS released a video in February calling for attacks on the religious minority. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid called Sunday’s bombing “a failed attempt against our unity”. “Terrorism hits Egypt again, this time on Palm Sunday,” he tweeted.