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Egyptian Christians touch a blood-splattered image of Jesus Christ, inside the Coptic Orthodox church in Alexandria, January 2, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh |
The presumed suicide attack killed 21 people gathered outside the church during a midnight service, and wounded 97 others.
Hundreds of members of Egypt's large Christian minority held protests in Cairo and Alexandria to protest against the authorities' failure to protect them.
"Where are you, Interior Minister, when they are killing our brothers before your eyes?" protesters in a cathedral compound in Cairo chanted as government officials came to offer condolences.
Some protesters pelted a minister's car with stones when he left, witnesses said. Some visiting Christian officials had cars shaken by angry demonstrators, while other protesters scuffled with police outside the compound.
Extra police officers were posted outside several churches in Cairo and Alexandria on Sunday, preventing cars from parking next to the buildings, witnesses said.
Pope Benedict, head of the Roman Catholic church, condemned the bombing as a "vile gesture," the latest in a series of attacks on Christians in the Middle East and Africa.
Egyptian officials said there were indications that "foreign elements" were behind the blast and that it seemed to have been the work of a suicide bomber. One security source said seven people were being held, and 10 had been freed after questioning.
An Iraqi group linked to al Qaeda threatened in November to attack Egypt's Coptic Church. And about two weeks before the bombing, a statement on an Islamist website urged Muslims to attack churches in Egypt and elsewhere around Christmas, which for Orthodox denominations such as the Copts falls on January 7.
A statement on another Islamist website after the blast read: "This is the first drop of heavy rain, hand over our prisoners and turn to Islam." No group was named.
Islamist groups have accused the Church of trying to coerce Christian women who wanted to convert to Islam.
One protester, Nader Shenouda, said: "When there was a threat from al Qaeda a month or a month and a half ago, did the government have to wait till the disaster happened before protecting us?"
Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb, the head of al Azhar, Egypt's most prestigious seat of Sunni learning, visited the Muslim Orthodox Coptic Pope Shenouda to express condolences.
President Hosni Mubarak, 82, has pledged to track down the culprit. He made a televised address on Sunday calling for national unity, saying the attack was directed at all Egyptians, not just Christians.
Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 79 million people. Tensions often flare with the majority Muslims over issues such as building churches or close relationships between members of the two faiths.
Analysts said the attack was on a much bigger scale than typical sectarian flare-ups but said laws that make it easier to build a mosque than a church, and similar causes of Christian complaint, meant such an attack would fuel sectarian tension.
"Right now Copts feel Muslims (as a whole) struck at them, rather than seeing it as a terrorist attack by one Muslim, and it is due to this ... feeling of discrimination," said Hisham Kassem, a publisher and rights activist.
Angus Blair, head of research at investment bank Beltone Financial, said the blast was likely to be brushed off by investors in the bourse and was not likely to have a "material negative impact" on tourism, a major revenue source.
"Whenever there have been terrorist attacks in Egypt, the stock market has been relatively sanguine in its reaction," he wrote in an email.
(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh, writing by Edmund Blair; editing by Kevin Liffey)
