ICC Note: When the infamous video of 21 Egyptian Christians being killed was released last February, the church of the Virgin Mary wept. 13 of the 21 killed attended the church in El Aour of the Minya Governate in Egypt. Since then, posters of the martyred have hanged both inside and outside the church doors. Sectarian violence between Muslims and Coptics has also emerged as a result of the violence in Libya. Those from the village believe the violence has come from outside sources as opposed to inside.

06-15-2015 Egypt (The Intercept): Just to the right of the entrance of the Church of the Virgin Mary in the village of El Aour is a large poster made from a blown-up screen grab from a video released online by the Islamic State in Libya. The image shows 21 young men kneeling with heads lowered, just moments before their execution; masked Islamic State militants stand behind them, knives at the ready.

Inside the church, a clergyman chants the second Sunday prayer at 7 a.m. Above him, another banner hangs with images of the faces of the young Christians executed in February by the Islamic State. All of those killed are believed to be Egyptian Christians, and 13 of the young men hailed from El Aour, a village in Egypt’s Minya Governorate, some 150 miles south of Cairo.

In mid-February, the Islamic State, which expanded into Libya in late 2014, released a five-minute video showing the beheading of the 21 Egyptian workers. The clip featured the victims wearing the now-familiar orange jumpsuits, being held by knife-wielding militants on a Mediterranean beach. The gruesome killings captured international headlines and sent shockwaves through the Egyptian Coptic community.

The small village of El Aour has become a microcosm of shifting sectarian conflict in the Middle East, where an event in one country can send ripples into a neighboring one, setting off another dispute. The once quiet rural village now faces conflicts over the construction of a new church to memorialize those killed — the “martyrs” as they’re called here.

A protest in April by local Muslims against the new church turned violent, with some protestors attacking the existing church and destroying property.

The conflict only started after the killings in Libya, according to Samia Fayig Dal El Gacha, the mother of Samou’il Faraj Ibrahim, one of the young men killed in Libya. “Then people started coming to throw things at the church, to fight. Before [Muslims] never fought us,” she says. “But as soon as our boys were killed, then they come threatening [the church].”

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