At least 21 people were killed and 79 injured when a car bomb exploded outside a Coptic Christian church in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, in the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt since 2006, Bloomberg reports.
The blast occurred at about 12:30 a.m. today as worshipers were leaving a New Year’s service. “Foreign elements” appear to have been responsible for the blast, the Interior Ministry said in a statement on its website, using phrasing that often indicates Al-Qaeda. No group has claimed responsibility.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak described the explosion as a “terrorist attack,” his spokesman Suleiman Awwad said in an e-mail. “The president, while expressing his condolences to the victims’ families, urges Egyptians, Muslims and Coptic Christians alike, to stand united against terrorism,” Awwad said.
Sectarian violence and discrimination have worsened in Egypt, say Copts, who account for about 10 percent of the Muslim-dominated population of 80 million people.
Tensions between the two communities, reported in the government-controlled and independent press, have been building for several years. In November, Egyptian police killed a protester during clashes with Coptic Christians triggered by a halt to the construction of a church.
Today’s attack was likely to have been carried out by a suicide bomber, state-run Nile News television reported, citing the Interior Ministry.
The incident is the most violent to have taken place in the nation since a series of bombings on the Sinai peninsula between 2004 and 2006 that targeted Red Sea resorts, killing about 150 Egyptians and foreign tourists.
The Coptic Orthodox Church was founded in Alexandria in the first century by Mark, one of the apostles of Jesus. After an Arab army conquered Egypt in the seventh century, Islam gradually became the country’s dominant religion.
