ICC Note: Tensions have long plagued the Muslim and Christian communities in Egypt. Sectarian attacks are not at all uncommon, but recently there has been a sharp increase in the religiously motivated violence. On July 5th, an Orthodox nun was killed in crossfire. Homes have been consistently attacked by Muslim mobs, and Christian girls have been kidnapped and forced into jihadi marriages. While President al-Sisi has promised to defend the Christian minority in his country, Coptic optimism is fading as change is yet to be seen.

07/11/2016 Egypt (Al Monitor): An Orthodox Christian nun from Mar Girgis Monastery in Old Cairo was killed July 5 after reportedly being hit by a stray bullet in an exchange of fire on the Cairo-Alexandria Highway. A man and his son were also injured in what Egyptian media has described as a “revenge attack” by gunmen.

Nearly a week after the tragic incident, little is known about the circumstances of the nun’s death and the identity of the assailants remains undisclosed. To stave off skepticism, local media have said that this was not a sectarian attack and that the nun had not been deliberately targeted. ”She was caught in the crossfire,” the semi-official Al-Ahram reported a day after the attack.

Tensions have long simmered between Muslims and Christians in Egypt and sectarian attacks have escalated since the Arab Spring. In recent weeks and months, there has been a marked increase in religiously motivated violence — a cause for growing concern for rights groups and Egypt’s estimated 9 million Christians (the Middle East’s largest Christian community). The rising tide of anti-Christian sectarianism in Egypt has generally been underreported by the country’s mainstream media, which has been peddling the official narrative that “Muslims and Christians are one people, united by a common history and destiny.” Police, meanwhile, deliberately downplay the sectarian strife and at times, and even cover up attacks on Christians by not documenting them as such. Moreover, the perpetrators of such crimes often escape justice. In the last five years, churches and homes of Christians have been burned and entire families have been forcibly evacuated from their villages or have had to relocate to flee persecution. During the period of Islamist rule in Egypt, increased insecurity and fear of persecution prompted thousands of Christians to leave the country, seeking safety and greater freedoms overseas.

Meanwhile, a fresh spate of attacks on Christians in recent weeks has left the country reeling from shock. On June 30, a priest was shot and killed by a gunman outside a car repair shop near St. George’s Church in the North Sinai town of el-Arish. It was the latest in a string of attacks on Christians in the volatile region where the military has been fighting an Islamist insurgency since the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013. The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the priest’s death in a statement published on social media, describing him as a “disbelieving combatant.”

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