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HHundreds of Egyptian Coptic Christians gathered Saturday for a funeral south of Cairo to bid farewell to six of the seven people killed the day before when militants ambushed three buses carrying pilgrims to the isolated desert monastery .
The service at the Prince Tadros Church, in the city of Minya, was held in a climate of enhanced security and chaired by Anba Makarios, the most famous cleric of Minya. He and the members of the congregation prayed and sang in a row of six white coffins.
The relatives of the victims cried and supported each other.
All but one of the people killed belonged to the same family, according to a church-published list of victims, according to which a boy and a girl, aged 15 and 12 respectively, were among the dead. A total of 19 were wounded in the attack, according to the Coptic Orthodox Church.
The local affiliate of the Islamic State group, which is spearheading militants fighting the security forces in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, has claimed responsibility for the attack south of Cairo. He said the attack was a vengeance for imprisonment by "the Egyptian authorities of" our chaste sisters "but without giving further details.
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