Cairo: Egypt’s state news agency says a knife-wielding attacker has been shot and killed after he stabbed a guard at a Coptic church.
MENA says the attack happened early on Wednesday at the Virgin Mary church in Cairo’s eastern suburb of Nozha. The report says other church guards at the scene killed the assailant, whose identity and motives were unclear. Authorities have launched an investigation, the news agency said.
Attacks on Coptic churches in Egypt have stepped up over the past years, especially after Coptic Christians sided with the Egyptian army in the military’s 2013 ouster of the Islamist President Mohammad Mursi. Scores of churches were stormed, looted, and torched afterwards. Most of the assaults took place in southern Egypt.
Christians make up some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 91 million people.
