At least 40 have been reported dead at two Coptic churches in Alexandria and Tanta.
A girl is seen after a bomb attack near St. Marks Cathedral in the coastal city of Alexandria, Egypt on April 09, 2017.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for terrorist bombings at two Coptic Christian churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday, The New York Times reports. The attacks took place in the northern city of Tanta, where an explosive device was planted in the main prayer hall of St. George’s Church, and in Alexandria, where a suicide bomber detonated a bomb outside St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral.At least twenty-seven people were killed and sixty were wounded in Tanta, and thirteen were killed and up to thirty-five wounded in the church in Alexandria. Pope Tawadros II, the head of Egypt’s Coptic Church, was inside St. Mark’s Cathedral before the bombing took place, but had left before it happened and was not injured. Police stopped the bomber in Alexandria from entering the church.Coptic Christians are a minority in Egypt, making up 10% of a population of around 91 million. They’ve become an increasingly persecuted group in the region ever since Hosni Mubarak’s regime ended in 2011. In December, a similar attack on a church in Cairo killed twenty-five people.These attacks come just days after Donald Trump met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Washington to discuss combatting terrorist groups like ISIS.
The Archbishop of Canterbury called the bombings “evil” and urged people to pray for the victims, and Vladimir Putin also condemned the attacks. Pope Francis, who is scheduled to visit Cairo this month to meet with various heads of the Christian Church, sent condolences to Pope Tawadros II:“To my dear brother his Holiness Pope Tawadros II, to the Coptic church and to all of the dear country Egypt, I express my deep condolences, I prayed for the dead and the wounded, I am close to the families and to the entire community. God convert the hearts of the people who spread terror, violence and dead, and also the heart of who produces and traffic weapons.”