ALEXANDRIA - New Year's blood in Alexandria, where a car bomb exploded outside a church at the end of midnight mass has 21 dead and 8 wounded. It 'been a hard blow for the large community of Christian Copts of Egypt and Alexandria, the target of the explosion leaving a church service to propitiate the new year.An eyewitness told ANSA of a "bloodbath", followed by an ambulance coming and going among the mangled bodies on the ground. Christians and Muslims would then be dealt with blows with a stick in the adjacent streets. Last November, the Iraqi wing of Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility after a bloody attack on the Syrian-Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad, had threatened the Egyptian Coptic community, particularly numerous among the Christians of the Middle East.
The Islamic terrorists had been ordered to "liberate" two Egyptian Christians "held captive in monasteries" to prevent their conversion to Islam. The Copts are between 6 and 10% of the approximately 80 million inhabitants of Egypt. The attack last night, which was not at the time claimed, took place at half past midnight in the Sidi Bishr district of the big city near the Mediterranean, before the Church of Saints (Al-Qiddissine).
According to preliminary reports, the car packed with explosives was parked in front of the church ten minutes before the blast. A witness told the television he saw people getting off the vehicle, a Skoda. The blast, strong, took place when the faithful were leaving the church and immediately spread to nearby cars, broke the devastating effect of multiplying.
The final budget of the dead according to the Ministry of Health is 21, eight more wounded. After the attack, while ambulances were back and forth to help the victims, groups began to attack Copts incensed Muslims in the surrounding streets. The Egyptian interior ministry has imposed harsh security measures around all the churches and doubled the agents to counter any attack.
Tight controls were also imposed on the governorate of Marsa Matruh, on the coast and Cairo airport to prevent the escape of the perpetrators. "The effort to cleanse the Islamic Middle East by Christians has increased," he writes with irony a site Coptic. Al Azhar, however, the highest instance of Sunni Islam, has thrown water on the fire, condemning the 'attack in Alexandria.
In a statement published by the Egyptian press, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has called "the Egyptians, Copts and Muslims, to maintain their unity in the face of the terrorist forces that undermine the stability of the homeland and its unity."
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