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One shot dead, five injured in Egypt train attack

11 January 2011 22:39 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. One Egyptian Christian was killed and at least five others were injured in a shooting spree on a train in south Egypt, Egypt’s official MENA news agency confirmed on Tuesday, APA reports quoting news.xinhuanet.com website.

A gunman opened fire to passengers randomly on a train in Minya governorate, killing one Christian man and injured five others. The train was on its way from Cairo to Asyut.

The shooter has been arrested and is questioned by police, but his motive was not immediately clear.

The shooting incident comes two weeks after the suicide bombing outside a Coptic church in Egypt’s Mediterranean city of Alexandria in New Year’s Eve, which killed 21 and injured nearly 100 others, the deadliest attack in the Islamic country in years.

The bombing caused demonstrations of Coptic Christians around the country protesting against government’s failure to protect their community.

Coptic Christians account for about 10 percent of Egypt’s total population of nearly 80 million.

Tensions between Muslims and Coptics have kept cropping up in Egypt for a number of reasons. Christians often complain about being discriminated against in the country, saying they are not given the same freedom for building churches as Muslims building mosques.

Last November, hundreds of Egyptian Coptic Christians clashed with police in Giza Governorate to protest the freeze of building a church, leaving one protester killed.

A few days before the November clash, Muslims set fire to some houses owned by the family of a Coptic man who was said to had an affair with a Muslim girl in southern Egypt.

The Egyptian government has been calling for and striving to achieve unity between the Muslim majority and the Coptics in the country.