Egypt’s Interior Ministry says a policeman was killed as he was trying
to defuse a homemade explosive device near a church in a residential
Cairo district, The Associated Press reported.
The ministry says the blast late on Saturday in the Egyptian capital
also wounded the commander of the bomb squad. It came just two days
before the Orthodox Coptic Church, the dominant denomination among
Egypt’s estimated 10 million Christians, celebrates Christmas.
The incident likely will force authorities to further tighten security around churches.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, which bore the
hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which has targeted Christians over
the past years, killing more than a hundred of them in attacks on
churches and buses carrying pilgrims to remote desert monasteries.