As most of Egypt was busy with the parliamentary elections, a gruesome attack took place against the Copts in the village of al-Ghurayzat in Sohag, Upper Egypt.
WATANI International
30 November 2011
As most of Egypt was busy with the parliamentary elections, a gruesome attack took place against the Copts in the village of al-Ghurayzat in Sohag, Upper Egypt.
The violence erupted in the wake of a fight between John Hosni, a Coptic student, and a Muslim microbus driver man who goes by the name of Shaikhoun, in his thirties. Hosni hit Shaikhoun with a sharp instrument on the head; the driver was rushed to hospital where he breathed his last.
The village Muslims decided to take vengeance of all the Copts in the village, and went on a brutal spree of assaulting them and looting and destroying or burning their homes or shops.
Two Coptic brothers in their late twenties, Kamel and Kameel Tamer, were slaughtered. And the losses incurred from attacking 25 shops amounted to some EGP1 million.
Bimen Attallah, a lawyer who lives in Ghuraizat, bitterly asked why all the Copts in the village should be made to pay a horrendous price for something they had no hand in. “We have been attacked under the eyes and noses of the police,” he said, “who did not lift a finger to protect us.”
“The wounded are falling by the minute,” Attallah said; “it’s not even possible to count them. The Coptic families are in the streets; they have nowhere to go to, and the children are wailing in terror.”
The police in the village focused on protecting the Mar-Girgis (St George) church alone, and did nothing to defend the Copt’s lives or homes. Two other churches in the village were also left unprotected.
Till past midnight on the Copts were calling upon the Military Council to rescue them, but there was no response.
After the burial of Shaikhoun and the Tamer brothers, attempts by local security officials to reconcile the villages Coptic and Muslim families started. But the Copts refused any reconciliation unless legal procedures are assumed, and the culprits are taken to court.