At least 21 people were killed and 50 injured on Sunday when an explosion rocked a Coptic church in Egypt’s Nile Delta, state television reported, the latest assault on a religious minority that has increasingly been targeted by Islamist militants.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility and the cause of the blast, just one week before Coptic Easter and the same month that Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Egypt, was not known.
The bombing in Tanta, a Nile Delta city less than 100 kilometres outside Cairo, comes as Islamic State’s branch in Egypt appears to be stepping up attacks on Christians and threatening them in messages blasted out to followers.
In February, Christian families and students fled Egypt’s North Sinai province in droves after Islamic State began a spate of targeted killings there.
Those attacks came after one the deadliest on Egypt’s Christian minority in years, when a suicide bomber hit its largest Coptic cathedral, killing 25. Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack.
