{"id":20853,"date":"2018-11-02T18:24:10","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T18:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20853"},"modified":"2018-11-02T18:24:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T18:24:10","slug":"seven-killed-in-attack-on-coptic-christian-bus-in-egypt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20853","title":{"rendered":"Seven killed in attack on Coptic Christian bus in Egypt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nCAIRO: Seven people were killed and 20 wounded on Friday when gunmen opened fire on three buses carrying Coptic Christians.<\/p>\n

\nThe attack took place near the remote desert\u00a0monastery of St Samuel in Minya\u00a0province.<\/p>\n

\nPresident Abdel Fattah El-Sisi offered condolences for the victims and vowed to push ahead with a campaign to crush militants in the country.<\/p>\n

\n“I wish a speedy recovery to the injured and assert our determination to fight dark terrorism and to pursue the perpetrators,” El-Sisi said.<\/p>\n

\nSecurity forces rushed to the scene and ambulances ferried the\u00a0injured to hospitals nearby, a security source told Arab News.<\/p>\n

\nCoptic Orthodox Church spokesman Bouls Halim said the death toll in the\u00a0attack was likely to rise, AP reported.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nEgypt’s Coptic priest Agathon speaks to a woman at the Sheikh Fadel hospital where she was being treated for her injuries in the attack. (AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\nDaesh, which has carried out similar attacks, said it was behind the massacre. The extremist militants have\u00a0been fighting security forces in the Sinai Peninsula and along Egypt’s\u00a0border with Libya.<\/p>\n

\nFriday\u2019s attack is the second to target pilgrims heading to the St Samuel monastery in as many years. A Daesh attack on a bus convoy in Minya in May 2017 killed at least 29 people.<\/p>\n

\nA security source told Arab News that the gunmen attacked the bus on side roads leading to the monastery after the main route had been closed by police for security reasons since the 2017 attack. Communications networks in the area had also been disrupted for the same reason.<\/p>\n

\nAl-Adwa, Beni Mazar and Maghagha hospitals declared a state of emergency as they treated the injured.<\/p>\n

\nA spokesman for the monastery, Peter Lahami, said there were people with very serious injuries and that the death toll could increase.<\/p>\n

\nAnother church source said the bus had come from Margarijs in Sohag.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nCoptic expert Robier Al-Faris said that after Egypt\u2019s major security operation in Sinai to clear militants from the peninsula, some of the extremists had spread south to continue attacks.<\/p>\n

\nThe Egyptian security forces have recently carried out several raids on militant targets, training camps and support centers in Upper Egypt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nLast week, 11 extremists from the mountainous area of Dashlout-Farafra in Assiut province were killed.<\/p>\n

\nA week before, nine militants were killed in a mountain cave in a remote area of Assiut.<\/p>\n

\nThe attack last year was the latest in a deadly series that targeted churches in Cairo,\u00a0 Alexandria and Tanta in the Nile Delta<\/p>\n

\nThose attacks, all claimed by Daesh, killed\u00a0at least 100 people\u00a0and led to tighter security around Christian places of worship and other Church-linked facilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAIRO: Seven people were killed and 20 wounded on Friday when gunmen opened fire on three buses carrying Coptic Christians. The attack took place near the remote desert\u00a0monastery of St Samuel in Minya\u00a0province. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi offered condolences for the victims and vowed to push ahead with a campaign to crush militants in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}