Masked gunmen kill Christians in Egypt
Gunmen open fire on bus carrying Copts to a monastery
At least 28 Coptic Christians on theway to a monastery south of Cairo are killed in an ambush.
CAIRO — Masked gunmen ambushed a bus carrying Coptic Christians to a monastery south of Cairo on Friday, killing at least 28 people, and Egypt responded by launching airstrikes against what it said were militant training bases in Libya.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi announced the retaliatory action hours after the bus was riddled with machine-gun fire on a remote desert road by suspected Islamic State militants riding in three SUVs.
“What you’ve seen today will not go unpunished. An extremely painful strike has been dealt to the bases. Egypt will never hesitate to strike terror bases anywhere,” el-Sissi said in a televised address to the nation.
Senior Egyptian officials said fighter jets targeted bases in eastern Libya of the Shura Council, an Islamist militia known to be linked to al-Qaida, not the Islamic State. There was no word on damage or casualties.
El-Sissi also appealed to President Donald Trump to lead the global war against terror.
Trump, in Italy on his first trip abroad as president, blamed the bloodshed on a “thuggish ideology” and said it should bring nations together to crush “evil organizations of terror.”
At the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was “saddened” by the “barbaric” attack.
In a condolence message sent to el-Sissi, Francis said he’ll continue his “intercession for peace and reconciliation” throughout Egypt.
The massacre took place on the eve of Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, a time when some militant factions have stepped up attacks in the past.
The ambush — in the Minya region about 150 miles south of Cairo — underscored the increasing pressures on Egyptian forces as Islamist militants gain greater footholds around the country, under cutting Egypt’s vital tourism industry and forcing greater security for Coptic Christians and others targeted by militants.
The ambush of the bus was the fourth deadly attack against the country’s Christians since December. The dead included two girls, ages 2 and 4, local officials said. Twenty-two others were reported wounded.
The bus attack deepens the woes of the majority-Muslim nation, where el-Sissi’s government is struggling not only to crush a burgeoning Islamic insurgency but to revive the battered economy.
The country’s Christians have complained that the government is not doing enough to protect them from Islamic extremists, and hundreds of them reacted to the bus attack by staging angry street protests in two provincial cities, destroying at least six cars and briefly cutting off railway lines.
“Either we get retribution or die like them,” some chanted.
There was no claim of responsibility for the ambush. But it bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State, also called ISIS, which has been spearheading an insurgency that has carried out deadly attacks in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and, increasingly, on the country’s mainland.
The Interior Ministry said the assailants opened fire as the bus traveled to the St. Samuel the Confessor monastery in Maghagha. The Coptic Orthodox monastery is reachable only by an unpaved route off the main highway.
Security and medical officials quoted witnesses as saying they saw eight to 10 attackers in military uniforms. They said one of the assailants’ SUVs got stuck in the sand, so they torched it and hijacked a truck traveling the same road, killing its occupants.
Arab TV stations showed images of a bus riddled with bullet holes, with many of its windows shattered and bloodstains on the seats. Bodies lay on the ground, some covered with black plastic sheets.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the death toll could rise.
The government is likely to further tighten security around churches, monasteries, schools and pilgrimages to remote Christian sites, which may be suspended, the officials said.
Egypt’s Copts, the Middle East’s largest Christian community, account for about 10 percent of the country’s 93 million people.