World

Gunman kills 10 outside church near Cairo

A gunman opened fire on a church south of Cairo on Friday, killing at least nine people in the latest apparent jihadist attack on the country’s Christian minority.

Health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed told state television that the gunman was shot dead after killing nine people and wounding others, including a police officer. But the interior ministry said in a statement that the assailant, a wanted jihadist implicated in attacks on police, had been wounded and arrested.

The jihadist had been armed with an assault rifle, 150 rounds of ammunition and a bomb he intended to set off at the church, the ministry said. More than 100 Christians have been killed in Egypt in the past year – most attacks claimed by the local branch of the so-called Islamic State group.

Security forces have put checkpoints in place around the capital in response to the attacks. They announced plans earlier this week to protect festivities around the New Year and Coptic Christmas. They include the deployment of rapid-reaction forces and jamming equipment.

The jihadists are believed to have also carried out a massacre of Muslim worshippers in Sinai last month, killing more than 300 in an attack on a mosque associated with the mystical Sufi strand of Islam which IS views as heretical.

Egypt imposed a state of emergency following the church attacks and shootings, and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi demanded the army confront the jihadists with “brutal force” following the mosque massacre.

The group has been waging a deadly insurgency based in the Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.

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