Egypt in tight security ahead of Coptic Christmas celebrations
Egyptian authorities have beefed up security as the country’s minority Coptic Christians prepare their celebrations for the Orthodox Christmas.
Tens of thousands of soldiers and police were on duty across Egypt as of Saturday, a day before the Coptic Christians mass to celebrate the holy occasion.
A focus of the heavy deployment was an unfinished cathedral in Egypt's new Administrative Capital east of Cairo. Pope Tawadros II was to lead Christmas Mass later in the day in the Nativity of Christ, the first time in living memory that the event is not held in the seat of the orthodox church in St. Mark's Cathedral in central Cairo. Around 3,000 people, including President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, were expected to attend the Mass.
The beef-up in deployment comes amid the fragile security in Egypt, especially for the country’s minority Copts, who have been the target of frequent attacks by militants in the recent past. A branch of Daesh, a Takfiri terrorist group now on its last legs in Iraq and Syria, has been behind high-profile assaults on the Coptic Christians, killing more than a hundred over the past two years.
The militant group launched a widespread insurgency in the restive Sinai Peninsula as soon as Sisi led a coup in 2013 against a democratically-elected government of Egypt. The attacks spread to mainland after Sisi, a former army chief, became president in 2014.
Copts constitute an overwhelming majority of Christians in the Muslim-dominated Egypt. In a show of solidarity, Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, paid a visit to the North African country last year, in what was believed to be a government-sponsored move to allay concerns about the security of the minority group.
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