As anticipated, in Mit Bashar, Zaqaziq, by Tuesday evening, an angry mob gathered once more and started attacking the church and the Copts’ houses, only a few hours after Rania’s return.
As anticipated, in Mit Bashar, Zaqaziq, by Tuesday evening, an angry mob gathered once more and started attacking the church and the Copts’ houses, only a few hours after Rania’s return.
The radical crowd kept hurling stones on the church which was already full of Copts who came earlier in order to protect it. Security threw tear gas on the crowd, but these retorted by hurling Molotov cocktails on security and on the church wall, a part of which fell down. In the mean time, the village’s elders and mosques’ imams tried to confront the assailants who still tried to access the church, but the crowd still kept growing larger, and security was no longer able to contain matters.
Copts kept calling for help from inside the church especially after they started fearing that the church be set on fire. According to Wahib Girgis, one of the village’s Copts who was inside the Holy Virgin church trying to protect it, the mob demanded that Fr Girgis Gamil leave the village, which is completely inexplicable, said Girgis especially that Rania, the missing girl is back and denied that the Church abducted her.
As the violence escalated in Mit Bashar, security and the Army had to call for additional support and supplies to be able to confront the violence, and the village’s Muslims formed human shields around the church and the Copts’ homes, preventing the vicious crowd from accessing Coptic property, which made us feel safer, said Marco Youssed and Sobhy Gawish, two of the village’s Copts.
Mosques’ imams voices were heard through microphones all over the village calling on the crowd to stop their violence, that is banned by Islam, and go home to protect their Coptic neighbours, pointing out that the girl in question is now in the Zaqaziq Security Headquarters. More ammunition arrived from the Military Police and Central Security, and things are getting quieter, after the crowd started to retract from around the church, said Gawish.
He said that the angry crowd is formed of radical Muslims, many thugs and a group of unemployed, and that along with their violence against Copts, they are utterly rejected by Mit Bashar Muslims.