Friday’s attack on a bus carrying Egyptian Copts, which killed at least 28 people, was the latest in a wave of massacres of Christians and attacks on churches in the Middle East.
– January 1, 2011: blast kills 23 and wounds 79, mostly Christians, as they leave a Christian Coptic church after New Year’s mass in the port city of Alexandria. The authorities say the attack, which is not claimed, was carried out by a suicide bomber.
– October 20, 2013: an attack at Cairo’s Church of the Virgin during a Coptic wedding kills four.
The attack is the first targeting the capital’s Coptic community since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on July 3.
Dozens of churches, homes and businesses belonging to Copts are attacked, especially in central Egypt, in the weeks after the bloody breaking up of two pro-Morsi gatherings in Cairo in August.
– December 11, 2016: A suicide attack in central Cairo on the Saint Peter and Saint Paul church, adjacent to the headquarters of Coptic Pope Tawadros II, kills 29. It is claimed by the Islamic State group.
– April 9, 2017: 45 people killed in twin Palm Sunday church bombings claimed by IS in Tanta and Alexandria.
– October 31, 2010: an attack on the Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad kills 46 Christians during an Al-Qaeda hostage drama.
It is the deadliest attack on Iraq’s Christians since the US-led invasion in 2003 and leads to an exodus of Iraqi Christians.
– December 25, 2013: a car bomb targets a Baghdad church after Christmas Day mass, killing at least 14 people.
Since the conflict began in 2011, several numerous Christian churches have been damaged or destroyed.
– June 27, 2013: a suicide bomb in a Christian area of Damascus kills at least four people.
The same neighbourhood had already been attacked in October 2012, leaving at least 10 dead.
– September 2013: jihadists attack the Greek Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Annunciation in the northern city of Raqa. A Syrian NGO says the jihadists have also torched statues and crucifixes in two churches in the north.
– During fighting in 2016 in the northern city of Aleppo the maronite cathedral is devastated, its roof caving in under a hail of shellfire.
– In Palmyra IS, as well as destroying the city’s famous cultural heritage, turns a church into a recruiting centre.
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