Ambush on bus carrying Christian Coptic pilgrims in Egypt leaves several dead

CAIRO – Islamic activists on Friday night on a bus carrying Christian pilgrims on their way to a remote desert monastery south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, killing at least seven and wounding 12, the Interior Ministry said.

Coptic Orthodox Church spokesman Halim Buls said the death toll in Friday's attack was likely to rise. Local church officials in Minya province where the attack took place, the death toll at 10, but the higher figure could not be confirmed.

The group of the Islamic State militants who have been fighting for peace in the Sinai Peninsula and along with Libya.

Friday's attack is the second to target pilgrims heading to St. Samuel the Confessor monastery in as many years. The previous attack in May 2017 left nearly 30 people dead.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said the attackers used the road to reach the bus carrying the pilgrims, who were near the monastery at the time of the attack.

The attack last year in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Tanta in the Nile Delta north of the capital. Those attacks, all claimed by the Islamic State Group, left at least 100 people dead and tainted security around Christian places of worship and other Church-related facilities.

Egypt's Christians, who account for some 10 percent of the country's 100 million people, complain of discrimination in the Muslim majority country. The Coptic Church joins forces with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi when he, as defense minister, led the 2013 military overthrow of an Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi.