Egypt: Red Crescent helps Copts fleeing jihadists

Source: Fides

Egyptian Red Crescent volunteers are among the groups offering support to Christians fleeing IS/Daesh jihadists who stormed into their villages killing a number of people in seven brutal attacks last week. The majority of Christians have reached the city of Ismailia, on the west bank of the Suez Canal, halfway between Port said and Suez. In the city the Red Crescent are helping displaced Christian families receive accommodation and basic necessities.

Over the weekend the exodus towards Ismailia increased. Besides the Christians, entire family clans belonging to Muslim Bedouin tribes historically rooted in North Sinai, have arrives - a sign of growing tension in the region.

The House of Fatwa (Dar al Ifta al Misryah), the Egyptian body chaired by the Grand Mufti of Egypt and responsible for disseminating guidance and pronouncements regarding the application of the precepts of the Koran, has issued a statement condemning the murders, and stressing that the orchestrated campaign by jihadist groups against the indigenous Christians of Egypt aims explicitly to sabotage national unity.

The spokesmen of al-Nur, the ultra-conservative Salafi Party, have also publicly expressed their condemnation for the targeted killings of Coptic Christians in the north of Sinai, stressing that they "go against the teachings of Islam."

After the series of killings of Christians in Sinai began, Daesh spread a video message in which it claimed a new campaign of targeted violence against the Copts, defined by jihadists as "the favourite prey."

The video message shows the young suicide bomber who, on December 11 blew himself up in the church of Botrosiya, adjacent to the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo, killing 29 people.