CAIRO (AP) _ Thousands of Egyptian Christians have gone on a rampage after six members of their community were gunned down as they left midnight Mass on Coptic Christmas Eve.
A Muslim guard was also killed, and nine others wounded, when three gunmen in a car opened up with automatic guns on a crowd leaving a Coptic church in southern Egypt.
A search for the gunmen was under way, but no arrests have been made by late Thursday.
Coptic Christians rioted after Thursday’s burial services, smashing shop windows, chasing Muslims off the streets and bringing down street light poles.
The eruption of violence in Nag Hamadi, a mixed Christian-Muslim town with a history of religious tensions, served as a reminder of the government’s chronic failure to address sectarian strains in Egypt at a time when Islamic militancy is gaining ground.