21 KILLED IN BOMB BLAST OUTSIDE CHURCH IN EGYPT

A car bombing outside the church killed 21 people as worshippers gathered to mark the New Year, security and medical sources said on Saturday.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — At least 21 people were killed in bomb blast outside a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria early on New Year’s Day and the Interior Ministry said a foreign-backed suicide bomber may have been responsible.
Dozens of people were wounded by the blast, which scattered body parts, destroyed cars and smashed windows. The attack prompted Christians to protest on the streets, and some Christians and Muslims hurled stones at each other.

• Egypt has stepped up security around churches, banning cars from parking outside them, since an al Qaeda-linked group in Iraq issued a threat against the Church in Egypt in November.
• Egypt’s leaders were quick to call for unity, wary of any upsurge in sectarian strife or other tension as the country approaches a presidential election due in September amid some uncertainty about whether President Hosni Mubarak, 82, will run.
• Mubarak promised in a televised address that terrorists would not destabilise Egypt or divide Christians and Muslims. He said the attack “carries evidence of the involvement of foreign fingers” and vowed to pursue the perpetrators.
• A statement on an Islamist website posted about two weeks before the blast called for attacks on Egypt’s churches, listing among them the one hit. No group was named in the statement.
• US President Barack Obama described the bombing as a “barbaric and heinous act” and said the United States, a major ally, was ready to help Cairo in responding to it.
• The Muslim Brotherhood, seen as Egypt’s biggest opposition group and which decades ago renounced violence as means to power in Egypt, condemned the attack.
• The church said 20 people were confirmed killed and remains had been found indicating 4-5 others died in the blast, which struck as worshippers marking the New Year left the church.
• Christians make up about 10 percent of Muslim-majority Egypt’s 79 million people. Tensions often flare between the two communities over issues such as building churches or close relationships between members of the two faiths.
• Analysts said this attack was on a much bigger scale and appeared far more organised than the kind of violence that usually erupts when communal frustrations boil over.
• After protests overnight, more than 100 Christians protested again yesterday near the Coptic Orthodox church that was hit. “We sacrifice our souls and blood for the cross,” they chanted. Police used teargas to disperse protesters.
• Egypt’s Christians have been threatened by the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq, which attacked a church in Baghdad two months ago in what it called a response to the mistreatment of Muslim converts by Egyptian Copts.
• Sectarian tension is fuelled in part by Christian grievances such as laws making it easier to build mosques than churches.

In November, hundreds of Christians clashed with police, and with some Muslims who joined in, in Cairo in a protest against a decision to halt construction of a church. Officials said the Christians had no licence to build. Two Christians died, dozens were hurt and more than 150 detained.
Last January, a drive-by shooting of six Christians and a Muslim policeman at a church in southern Egypt sparked protests.

Source: Reuters