Nineteen suspected jihadists linked to a deadly attack on Coptic Christians in central Egypt have been killed in a shoot-out with police, the interior ministry said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Those killed in the exchange of fire were part of a cell that left dead seven pilgrims in Friday\u2019s attack in Minya province, a statement by the ministry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe terrorist elements opened fire on the forces who responded,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
The 19 suspected jihadists were found \u201cas part of a pursuit of terrorist elements involved in carrying out hostile operations in the country, including the last armed attack which targeted citizens returning from the Saint Samuel monastery\u201d, the ministry said.<\/p>\n
The Islamic State group claimed the Friday\u2019s attack – which killed six Copts and one Anglican – in a message via its propaganda agency Amaq.<\/p>\n
Raids were undertaken in the mountainous western desert of Minya province to track down the \u201cfugitive terrorist elements\u201d, the interior ministry said.<\/p>\n
Several Egyptian TV stations broadcast images provided by the interior ministry, which showed the bodies of armed men strewn across desert sand.<\/p>\n
The television images also displayed a tent alleged to have been used by the suspected jihadist cell, and a black IS flag.<\/p>\n
Pope Francis on Sunday spoke of his pain over the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI express my pain after the terrorist attack which two days ago hit the Coptic Orthodox church in Egypt,\u201d Francis said at Saint Peter\u2019s in the Vatican City.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pray for the victims, pilgrims killed just because they were Christian,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Copts, a Christian minority that make up 10 percent of Egypt\u2019s 97 million people, have in recent years been repeatedly targeted by IS jihadists.<\/p>\n
In May 2017, masked gunmen ordered Christians travelling to Saint Samuel to get off their buses and recant their faith.<\/p>\n
The group refused and were shot one by one, leaving 28 people dead in that IS-claimed attack.<\/p>\n
IS also killed more than 40 people in twin church bombings in April 2017, and an IS gunman last December killed nine people in an attack on a church in a south Cairo suburb.<\/p>\n
Egypt\u2019s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for citizens to battle against religious discrimination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nineteen suspected jihadists linked to a deadly attack on Coptic Christians in central Egypt have been killed in a shoot-out with police, the interior ministry said on Sunday. Those killed in the exchange of fire were part of a cell that left dead seven pilgrims in Friday\u2019s attack in Minya province, a statement by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46446,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46444\/revisions\/46446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}