Alexandria: Christians clashed with Egyptian police in Alexandria on Saturday, furious over an apparent suicide bombing against worshippers on the eve of New Year at a church.
The Interior Ministry blamed “foreign elements,” and the Alexandria governor accused al-Qaeda, pointing to the terror network’s branch in Iraq, which has carried out a string of attacks on Christians there and has threatened Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christian community as well.
Egypt’s government has long insisted that the terror network does not have a significant presence in the country, and it has never been conclusively linked to any attacks here. If al-Qaeda was involved, it raises the prospect of a serious new security threat within Egypt.
The bombing, about a half hour after the stroke of the New Year, stoked tensions that have grown in recent years between Egypt’s Christians and the Muslim majority.
In the wake of the New Year’s bombing, Christians unleashed their rage at authorities.
“Now it’s between Christians and the government, not between Muslims and Christians,” shrieked one Christian woman as several hundred young men clashed with helmeted riot police in the street outside the targeted church hours after the blast. As the rioters threw stones and bottles, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them. Some of the protesters beat Muslim passers-by.
Hours after Saturday’s blast, President Hosni Mubarak went on state TV and vowed to track down those behind the attack saying: “We will cut off the hands of terrorists and those plotting against Egypt’s security.”
Aiming to calm sectarian tension, he said the attack targeted “all Egypt” and that “terrorism does not distinguish between Copt and Muslim.”
Egypt’s top Muslim leaders also expressed their condolences and solidarity with Christians, and the biggest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, condemned the bombing. Dozens of Christians and Muslims held solidarity marches near the site and in Cairo, and some chanted slogans against Mubarak.
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