The bodies of the two Coptic brothers Wasfy and Fahmy Bekheit Gad Mikhail, both in their thirties, were today flown from Tripoli to Burg al-Arab airport west of Alexandria. A funeral service will be held for them tomorrow in their home village of Awlad Ali in the southern province of Sohag.
The two brothers had been working in Sirte in Libya for some two years and were not able to return to Egypt because of the hazardous journey back through Daesh-controlled land. Egyptian friends in Libya say that the brothers were asked by a Libyan to go some place away from town for work. For five days, nothing was heard from the Mikhails, till it was discovered that one of them was beheaded and the other shot dead. Their friends believe the brothers were killed by Daesh.
Daesh has been known to hunt Copts in Libya and kill them. The most notorious, if not the only incident of such killings was the beheading of 20 Copts and one Ghanaian on the seafront in Sirte early this year. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry and the Church have issued repeated warnings for Copts against travelling to Libya, and for Egyptians in Libya to return home.
Watani International
25 November 2015