Unidentified gunmen killed 26 Coptic Christian in Egypt Friday when they opened fire on a bus, Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Mugahed told TV al-Masriya.
The group was traveling to a monastery, St. Samuel the Confessor, in two buses and a lorry when the gunmen shot at them from two cars on a desert road about 60 miles west of Minya. At least 25 people are reportedly injured and the casualties include men, women and children. Fifty ambulances are on scene, CNN reports.
It is not immediately clear what group is responsible for the attack.
Coptic Christians, a Christian sect that bases its faith on the Gospel of Mark, make up roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s population and have experienced harsh persecution from Islamists across the Middle East. There have been 77 sectarian attacks against Coptic Christians in Minya Province between 2011 and 2016, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
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