ICC Note: President Sisi of Egypt has named the alleged perpetrator of the Cairo church bombing as 22-year-old Mahmoud Shafik Mohamed Mostafa. The attack was a suicide bombing that targeted Christians in the early morning mass of St. Marks Cathedral in Cairo. Sisi attended the state funeral for the 24 victims of this attack and has denounced the attack and called for this as an opportunity to strengthen Egypt as a whole.

12/13/2016 Egypt (The Guardian): Mourners have paid their respects to the victims of Sunday’s attack on the seat of Coptic Christianity in Egypt, as the Coptic pope sought to heal sectarian frictions amid rising anger from a minority that claims it is insufficiently protected.

The attack on St Peter and St Paul church, adjoining Cairo’s St Mark’s Cathedral, took place during Sunday morning prayers and killed 24 people, most of them women and children, according to an updated toll issued by the health ministry on Monday. At least 45 others were injured. There has been no claim of responsibility.

President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi named a 22-year-old, Mahmoud Shafik Mohamed Mostafa, as the alleged perpetrator of the suicide attack. He said other people, including one woman, had been arrested over their alleged involvement.

As mourners crowded into the Virgin Mary and St Athanasius church in Cairo on Monday, the Coptic pope, Tawadros II, attempted to focus on the unity of Egypt’s grief, denouncing the blast as “not just a disaster for the church but a disaster for the whole nation”.

He added: “Those who commit acts such as this do not belong to Egypt at all, even if they are on its land.”

The dead were given a state funeral attended by Sisi, who has also been careful to stress the need for unity among Egypt’s Christian and Muslim citizens in the wake of the attack.

But for some in the Middle East’s biggest Christian community, those calls are far from enough.

Some survivors criticised lax security measures for the mass, which they said had not coped with the unusually high numbers of congregants. “There were large numbers, so people entered without being searched,” Mina Francis, who was at the mass with his mother, told Reuters. His mother was killed.

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