Christian protesters clashed with Muslims in Cairo
Ten people were killed in violence between Christians and Muslims in Cairo on Tuesday night, the state news agency reported on Wednesday.
The agency quoted a senior health ministry official as saying 110 people were wounded in the violence.
Earlier on Wednesday, a Coptic priest told AFP that six Coptic Christians were shot dead and at least 45 were injured in religious clashes with Muslims in the Egyptian capital.
"We have at the clinic the bodies of six Copts, all of them shot," local priest Samann Ibrahim told AFP.
The clashes between Christians and Muslims erupted in the poor working class district of Moqattam late Tuesday after at least 1,000 Christians gathered there to protest the burning of a church last week.
The ministry had earlier put the death toll at four.
A security source said that the clashes took place between Christians and Muslims who were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at each other in Moqattam.
The fighting erupted when a group of Christians blocked a main highway south of Cairo and clashed with Muslims who wanted to pass through, a security source said.
"The armed forces are successfully tackling the riots in the Moqattam and Qualaa neighborhoods," the state MENA news agency quoted an official it did not identify as saying.
Clashes
The Shahedain (Two Martyrs) church, in the Helwan provincial city of Sol, was set fire on Friday after clashes between Coptic Christians and Muslims that left two people dead.
The violence was triggered by a feud between two families, which disapproved of a romantic relationship between a Christian man and a Muslim woman in Sol.
"Problems escalated in the village when a group of Muslims headed to the burned out church and conducted a mass Islamic prayer there," Maged Ibrahim, a Christian resident told Egyptian state television.
The army fired gunshots in the air to break up the riot but was unable to quell the fight straight away, witnesses said. An army statement said it "successfully handled riots on Tuesday."
One 18-year old Christian was killed by a bullet that struck him in the back but it was unclear who had fired the shot or whether it had been aimed intentionally, the security source said. Some witnesses said they saw protesters carrying weapons.
"They (the Christians and the Muslims) began fighting because people in their cars wanted to pass through and the protesters had blocked the highway," the security source said.
About 20 people were injured and five cars were burnt during in the latest sectarian flare-up.
Rebuilding the church
In downtown Cairo hundreds of Christian protesters, carrying wooden crosses and some wearing glow-in-the-dark crucifixes brought another major highway to a halt.
Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, head of the ruling military council that is governing the country after Hosni Mubarak quit, said the army would rebuild the church before the Easter holidays.
There is a long history of animosity between Copts and Muslims in Egypt, though there have been recent signs of a rapprochement following a deadly New Year’s Day bombing of a church in Alexandria and during the recent popular revolt that unseated long-time president Hosni Mubarak.
Twenty-one people died and dozens more were wounded when what was believed to be a suicide bomb blew himself up just after midnight on New Year’s as worshippers left a church in Alexandria.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, which came after an al-Qaeda-linked group said it was behind a deadly Oct. 31 Baghdad church hostage-taking and threatened Coptic Christians as well.
But as Copts celebrated their Christmas on Jan. 7, thousands of Muslims gathered at churches across the country, forming human chains to protect them as they worshipped.
And during anti-Mubarak protests in Cairo in January, there were also cases of Copts doing the same for Muslims as they prayed in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
There are around 7,000 Christians in Sol, out of a total population of 50,000.
Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million population, complain of systematic discrimination and have been the target of several sectarian attacks.