Egyptian Christians flee Islamic State attacks

Record ID: 348087

  • Title: Egyptian Christians flee Islamic State attacks
  • Date: 2nd March 2017
  • Summary: CAIRO, EGYPT (FILE - DECEMBER 14, 2016) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF EXTERIOR OF DAMAGED CATHEDRAL CAIRO, EGYPT (FILE - DECEMBER 12, 2016) (REUTERS) MOURNING WOMEN CRYING CROWD CARRYING COFFIN OUT OF VAN CHURCH MEMBERS HOLDING CROSSES CROWD CARRYING COFFIN OUT OF VAN
  • Embargoed: 16th March 2017 17:03
  • Keywords: Egypt Ismailia Christian Islamic State Sinai violence insurgency
  • Location: ISMAILIA AND CAIRO, EGYPT
  • City: ISMAILIA AND CAIRO, EGYPT
  • Country: Egypt
  • Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Insurgencies
  • Reuters ID: LVA003669PJK7
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: When Islamic State militants began circulating names of Christians who must leave their Egyptian hometown of Arish or die, Munir Munir's father Adel, a civil servant, brought home a hit list that had his own name as number two.
    The first person on the list, shopkeeper Wael Youssef, was killed on Jan. 30. The Munirs barricaded themselves inside their house "like rats in a hole," Munir Munir recalled last week.
    Within a month, four more Christians in the town had been shot dead, one beheaded and another burned to death. After the seventh killing, the Munirs finally fled. Their father insisted on staying behind.
    A shift in Islamic State's tactics from attacking soldiers and police to targeting Christian civilians has become a potential turning point in a country trying to halt a provincial insurgency from spiralling into wider sectarian bloodshed.
    Over the past month, about 145 families have fled North Sinai to Ismailia, a city on the edge of the Suez Canal that forms the western boundary of Sinai, and about 30 to Cairo.
    Several families, including the Munirs, told Reuters that Muslim neighbours unaffiliated to Islamic State have stepped up assaults against them, emboldened by the militants and the violence that has destabilised their province and seen hundreds of soldiers and police killed in recent years.
    "Our neighbours took our land because we are Christian. They tried to attack me and my sister and when my father came to defend us they sprayed his face with acid," said Munir Munir's sister Dimiana as she huddled with four family members in a churchyard, waiting for volunteers to find them a new home.
    The families gathered forlornly at Ismailia's Evangelical Church around sacks overspilling with the clothes they managed to bring before they fled. Women wailed over lost homes and children ran around oblivious as volunteers brought in blankets and made calls seeking to secure shelter.
    The opening salvo came in December, when an Islamic State fighter bombed a church adjoining Cairo's St Mark's Cathedral, the seat of the Coptic papacy, killing 28 people. The militants threatened all Egyptian Christians in a video in February.
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