ICC Note: Attacks against Christians in Libya have struck close to home for one Egyptian family. Three cousins were killed by violent extremists after going to Libya in the hope of earning an income to assist their families in rural Upper Egypt. Two of them were killed in March of this year as the attacks against Christians have spiked.

04/24/2014 Egypt (Morning Star News) – The youngest cousin was carried back home in an ambulance, half dead with a bullet lodged in his skull. The next came back to the village just a month after he left, to be buried in a Coptic cemetery.

Another cousin disappeared in 2012; he is thought to have been taken by Islamic militants and hasn’t been heard from since.

For Christians in Egypt, the word “Benghazi” has become synonymous with death; for them, the seaside capital of Libya and surrounding area have gone from a place where Copts went to pursue better economic opportunities to one where they go and die.

In a quest to rid the city of Christians, Islamic militants have turned the area into a danger zone for Copts. Since March of last year, 13 Egyptian Christians have been killed there. Egyptian newspapers have been full of stories of Copts being arrested without cause, rounded up and executed or gunned down at their workplaces.

For one extended Coptic family in Egypt, the killings aren’t mere headlines; they have suffered the loss of two relatives, and likely a third, to Benghazi gunmen. They are the only extended family in Egypt known to have lost more than one member in Benghazi.

Though members of the family are emotionally torn, they say they have to accept the killings with faith. Noushy Saaed Tawfik, an uncle to one of the killed men, told Morning Star News, “We accept God’s burden upon us, and we accept His will.”

The most recent victim of the killings in Libya, Gad Abd Al-Messih Abd El-Malak, 37, died on March 29, after he was gunned down by Islamist militants. His cousin, Salama Fawzy Tobia, 23, was shot March 2 and died 13 days later.

All the victims came from Al Sheikh Talata village, an Upper Egypt backwater in Minya Province. When Egyptians picture Upper Egypt, most think of villages like Al Sheikh Talata. The village is insular and impoverished – date palms, donkeys and men dressed in a traditional loose-fitting garment known as a jellabiya dot a landscape of sugar cane and molokhia (Jute leaf) fields. Work is back-breaking and provides only a day-to-day existence. The village is so small it can’t be found on most maps of Egypt. The busy streets of Cairo seem like they are a world away. Libya is even farther.
…