VATICAN CITY: While many Egyptians celebrated the military’s actions in deposing Mohammed Morsi as president of Egypt, Fides News Agency reported groups of “fanatical Islamists” attacked a Coptic Catholic parish in the northern village of Delgia.
The pastor’s house as well as several buildings belonging to the Church were looted and then burnt to the ground on July 3.
“Thank God there were no victims and injuries but the alarm continues,” Coptic Catholic Bishop Botros Fahim Awad Hanna of Minya told Fides.
“The fundamentalists have closed the roads at the entrance to the village.
“They shout slogans against Christians, they say they want to destroy everything and now they are trying again to storm the church.
“The local police are helpless, I called Cairo to ask for the intervention of the army.”
The attack on the Catholic Coptic parish is, as of now, the most serious reported incident against Christians in the wake of the unfolding political drama affecting the nation.
However, Fides said “threats and intimidation against Christian communities have occurred in other parts of Egypt”.
Egypt’s first democratically elected president was overthrown by the military on July 3, ousted after a year in office.
The armed forces announced they would install a temporary civilian government to replace Morsi who denounced the action as a “coup” by the generals.
Millions of anti-Morsi protesters around the country erupted in celebrations after the televised announcement by the army chief.
Zenit
