Cairo: Prime Minister Sharif Esmail vowed that Egypt will press ahead with a relentless antiterrorism campaign as Daesh claimed responsibility for bombing two Egyptian churches on Palm Sunday killing at least 43 worshippers.
“God willing, we will stamp out this terrorism,” Esmail said before leaving for Tanta, around 93 kilometres from Cairo.
Analysts believe the latest attacks aim to destabilise the country after it has been largely successful in re-establishing security over the past three years.
“This crime is part of continuing attempts to destabilise not only Egypt but the Middle East,” said Ashraf Amin, a security expert.
“Every morning we wake up to an explosion in different countries in the region,” he told Egyptian television.
Amin called for expediting court trials for defendants involved in terror attacks.
“I learnt about the tragedy just after I finished praying in my district church,” Boutros, 32, said after he attended a mass service in a chapel in east Cairo. Egypt’s minority Christians were celebrating Palm Sunday which marks the beginning of the Passion Week culminating in Easter next week.
The bombing inside the Church of Mar Gerges in Egypt’s Nile city of Tanta occurred during a packed Palm Sunday mass.
“How can people worshipping God be killed? This is a black day for Egypt. ,” Boutros told Gulf News.
At least 27 people were killed and 78 injured in the attack, according to the Health Ministry.Hours later, a second suicide attack, hit the Saint Marks’ Church in the Mediterranean Sea city of Alexandria where Coptic Pope Tawadros II was leading a mass service inside. He was not harmed.
16 people, including three police officers were killed and 41 injured.
In the aftermath, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi called for an emergency meeting with the National Defence Council, state media reported.
Daesh claimed that its “squads” carried out both attacks, in a statement by its self-styled Amaq news agency published on social media accounts.
Images broadcast by private television stations showed bloodstains smearing the whitewashed walls of the church in Tanta next to shredded wooden benches.
“The explosion took place in the front rows, near the altar, during the mass,” General Tarek Atiya, the deputy to Egypt’s interior minister in charge of relations with the media, told AFP.
“I heard the blast and came running. I found people torn up... some people, only half of their bodies remained,” said Nabil Nader, who lives in front of the Tanta church.
Both bombings come more than four months after 30 worshippers were killed in a suicide attack inside a chapel adjoining the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo.
Daesh also claimed the December assault, the deadliest single attack against Egypt’s Christians in decades.
Egypt’s Christians, known as Copts, have long complained about persecution and attacks by Islamist extremists.
In February, hundreds of Christians fled North Sinai after radical Islamists carried out several executions.
Christians, who account for 10 per cent of Egypt’s mostly Muslim population, staunchly back Al Sissi, who as defence minister led the army’s 2013 ouster of Mursi following mass protests against his rule.
Dozens of churches across Egypt were attacked by Mursi’s backers in the violent protests that gripped the country following his overthrow.
In 2014, Al Sissi became the first Egyptian president to go to the Cathedral in central Cairo to congratulate Christians on the Coptic Christmas.
“I am sure that these terrorist attacks are deliberately aimed at destabilising Egypt and stirring sedition among its Christians and Muslims,” said Nader Safwat, a Christian engineer.
”In fact, the burden is heavy on the police in view of the wave of terrorism that has struck the country since Mursi’s overthrow,” he told Gulf News.
“The timing is suspicious as well since the [Sunday] attacks happened a week before the Pope’s visit to Egypt.”
Pope Francis is due in Egypt on April 28 for a two-day visit during which he will meet Al Sissi as well as Tawadros II and Shaikh Ahmad Al Tayyeb, the head of Al Azhar, Egypt’s prestigious Islamic seat of learning.
Al Azhar condemned Sunday’s attacks “a dastardly terrorist crime”.
“This is a heinous crime against all Egyptians,” it said in a statement.
— Inas Hamdy, a freelancer in Cairo, contributed to this report
With inputs from AFP
