CAIRO: A bomb blast at a church north of Cairo killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens who had gathered for Palm Sunday mass, officials said, in the latest apparent attack on Egypt’s Coptic Christians.
Some 71 people were wounded in the blast, which struck at a Coptic Church in the Nile Delta City of Tanta, 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Cairo, according to a health ministry toll.
Images broadcast by private television stations showed bloodstains smearing the whitewashed walls of the church next to shredded wooden benches.
Palm Sunday is one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar, marking the triumphant entrance of Jesus to Jerusalem.
“The explosion took place in the front rows, near the altar, during the mass,” General Tarek Atiya, the deputy to Egypt’s interior minister in charge of relations with the media, told AFP.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday’s blast.
Copts, who make up about one tenth of Egypt’s population of more than 92 million and who celebrate Easter next weekend, have been targeted by several attacks in recent months.
Pope Francis is due to visit Cairo on April 28-29 to show solidarity with Egypt’s Christian community.
Jihadists and Islamists accuse Copts of supporting the military overthrow of Islamist president Muhammad Mursi in 2013, which ushered in a deadly crackdown on his supporters.
In December, a suicide bombing claimed by the Daesh group killed 29 worshippers during Sunday mass in Cairo.
The bombing of the church within a compound that also holds the seat of the Coptic papacy was the deadliest attack against the minority in recent memory.
A spate of jihadist-linked attacks in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula, including the murder of a Copt in the city of El Arish whose house was also burned, have led some Coptic families to flee their homes.
About 250 Christians took refuge in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya after IS released a video in February calling for attacks on the religious minority.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid called Sunday’s bombing “a failed attempt against our unity.”
“Terrorism hits Egypt again, this time on Palm Sunday,” he tweeted.
Prime Minister Sherif Ismail also condemned Sunday’s apparent attack, stressing Egypt’s determination to “eliminate terrorism.”
The Cairo-based Al-Azhar, an influential Sunni Muslim authority, said Sunday’s bombing aimed to “destabilize security and... the unity of Egyptians.”
Egypt’s Copts have endured successive attacks since Mursi’s ouster in July 2013.
More than 40 churches were attacked nationwide in the two weeks after the deadly dispersal by security forces of two pro-Mursi protest camps in Cairo on August 14, 2013, Human Rights Watch said.
Amnesty International later said more than 200 Christian-owned properties were attacked and 43 churches seriously damaged, adding that at least four people were killed.
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who as then army chief helped remove Mursi, has defended his security forces and accused jihadists of attacking Copts in order to divide the country.
In October 2011, almost 30 people — mostly Coptic Christians — were killed after the army charged at a protest outside the state television building in Cairo to denounce the torching of a church in southern Egypt.
In May that year, clashes between Muslims and Copts left 15 dead in the working-class Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba where two churches were attacked.
A few months earlier, the unclaimed bombing of a Coptic church killed more than 20 people in Egypt’s second city of Alexandria on New Year’s Day.
Pope Francis will visit the site of the December church attack next to Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral — the seat of Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II.
Palm Sunday church bombing kills 22 in Egypt
Palm Sunday church bombing kills 22 in Egypt
Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue investments after US bribery allegations
- Adani Group holds a 70 percent stake in Haifa port in northern Israel and is involved in multiple other projects with firms in the country
- US last week accused Adani Group of being part of scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure contracts, misleading US investors
HYDERABAD, India: Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue to invest in the country, Israel’s envoy to India said on Thursday, affirming the nation’s support for the ports-to-media conglomerate whose billionaire founder is facing bribery allegations in the United States.
“We wish Adani and all Indian companies continue to invest in Israel,” Ambassador Reuven Azar said in an interview with Reuters, adding that allegations by US authorities were “not something that’s problematic” from Israel’s point of view.
The Adani Group holds a 70% stake in Haifa port in northern Israel and is involved in multiple other projects with firms in the country, including to produce military drones and plans for the manufacture of commercial semiconductors.
US authorities last week accused Gautam Adani, his nephew, and Adani Green’s managing director of being part of a scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure Indian power supply contracts and misleading US investors during fund raising efforts there.
Adani Group has denied all the accusations, calling them “baseless.”
Still, shares and bonds of Adani companies were hammered last week and some partners began to review joint projects.
“I am sure Adani Group will resolve its problems,” Azar said on the sidelines of an event in the southern city of Hyderabad.
Lebanon to hold parliament session on Jan. 9 to elect president
- State news agency: ‘Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9’
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s parliament will hold a session in January to elect a new president, official media reported on Thursday, a day after an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire began and following more than two years of presidential vacuum.
“Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9,” the official National News Agency reported.
Israeli tank fires at 3 south Lebanese towns
- Lebanese security sources and state media report tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba
BEIRUT: Israeli tank fire hit three towns along Lebanon’s southeast border with Israel on Thursday, Lebanese security sources and state media said, a day after a ceasefire barring “offensive military operations” came into force.
Tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, all of which lie within two kilometers of the Blue Line demarcating the border between Lebanon and Israel. One of the security sources said two people were wounded in Markaba.
A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday under a deal brokered by the US and France, intended to allow people in both countries to start returning to homes in border areas shattered by 14 months of fighting.
But managing the returns have been complicated. Israeli troops remain stationed within Lebanese territory in towns along the border, and on Thursday morning the Israeli military urged residents of towns along the border strip not to return yet for their own safety.
The three towns hit on Thursday morning lie within that strip.
There was no immediate comment on the tank rounds from Hezbollah or Israel, who had been fighting for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war.
The agreement, a rare diplomatic feat in a region racked by conflict, ended the deadliest confrontation between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in years. But Israel is still fighting its other arch foe, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip.
Under the ceasefire terms, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military not to allow residents back to villages near the border.
Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, had said on Wednesday that residents could return home.
Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north
- Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
- The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants
BEIRUT: A monitor of Syria’s war said on Thursday that more than 130 combatants had been killed in clashes between the army and militant groups in the country’s north, as the government also reported fierce fighting.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll in the clashes which began a day earlier after the militants launched an attack “has risen to 132, including 65 fighters” from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, 18 from allied factions “and 49 members of the regime forces.”
Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession
- Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday announced who would replace him in an interim period when the post becomes vacant, effectively removing the Islamist movement Hamas from any involvement in a future transition.
Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.
Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum.
But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his secular party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In a decree, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, would be his temporary replacement should the position should become vacant.
“If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily,” it said.
The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a “force majeure,” it said.
The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, has no representation on the council. The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed.
The decree refers to the “delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause” as war rages in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, after the latter’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in October last year.
There are also persistent divisions between Hamas and Fatah.
The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hamas’s ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by Israeli far-right ministers’ calls to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, an ambition increasingly less hidden by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.