Ten people were killed and 110 wounded in religious clashes on Tuesday in Cairo, the health ministry said, as Egypt’s mew military rulers struggle to steer the country through a transition.
“The total number of injured received by hospitals after the violence in the areas of Moqattam, the Citadel and Sayeda Aisha is 110, while 10 people were killed,” said Sherif Zamel, head of emergency services at the health ministry, without specifying if they were Christian or Muslim.
Earlier a Coptic Christian priest said at least six Copts were shot dead and 45 wounded by gunfire in the clashes between Muslims and Christians.
Photo: AFP
“We have at the clinic the bodies of six Copts, all of them shot,” local priest Samann Ibrahim said, referring to a medical center attached to his church.
The clashes between Christians and Muslims erupted in the poor working-class district of Moqattam mid-afternoon on Tuesday when at least 1,000 Christians gathered there to protest the burning of a church last week.
Ibrahim said some among the crowd of Muslims had opened fire on the demonstrators, adding that they had also petrol-bombed local houses and workplaces.
Several plastic recycling shops and warehouses storing cardboard boxes had been torched.
Fighting broke out when dozens of Muslims showed up in Moqattam, inhabited by Copts who work as garbage collectors and who had blocked a main north-south artery of the capital.
People threw rocks from both sides and witnesses said soldiers at the scene fired shots into the air in a bid to disperse the crowds.
Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million population, complain of systematic discrimination and have been the target of several sectarian attacks.
Ahead of the incident in Moqattam, Copts had protested in central Cairo against the burning of a church south of the capital after clashes between Christians and Muslims.
The protest outside the radio and television building came a day after at least 2,000 angry Christians demanded that the torched church be re-built, and that those responsible be brought to justice.
The Shahedain church, in the Helwan provincial town of Sol, was set ablaze on Friday after clashes between Copts and Muslims that left two people dead.
The violence was triggered by a feud between two families, which disapproved of a romantic relationship between a Christian man and a Muslim woman in Sol.
“Problems escalated in the village when a group of Muslims headed to the burned-out church and conducted a mass Islamic prayer there,” Maged Ibrahim, a Christian resident, told Egyptian state television.
Elsewhere in Cairo, a protest by hundreds of women demanding equal rights and an end to sexual harassment turned violent on Tuesday when crowds of men heckled and shoved the demonstrators, telling them to go home where they belong.
Also on Tuesday, a court rejected an appeal by former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his family against a top prosecutor’s move to seize funds that could total in the billions of dollars. The decision clears the way for a criminal investigation and a possible trial of Egypt’s former leader.
Mubarak, his wife, two sons and their wives have also been banned from travel abroad.
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