Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 02/2010

Renewed Violence against Egypt's Coptic Christians

David Schenker

January 2010

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Abstract

On January 6 -- Christmas Eve according to the Eastern Orthodox calendar -- six Coptic Christians and a policeman were killed in a drive-by shooting while exiting church in Naga Hammadi, Upper Egypt. The attack, which came in retaliation to an alleged rape of a twelve-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man, was the largest assault on Copts in Egypt since a January 2000 massacre left twenty dead in Sohag.