Update at the bottom.
A Happy New Year from the neighborhood muzzies.
Christians clashed with Egyptian police in the northern city of Alexandria on Saturday, furious over an apparent suicide bombing against worshippers leaving a New Year’s Mass at a church that killed at least 21 people. It was the worst violence against the country’s Christian minority in a decade.
The Interior Ministry blamed “foreign elements,” and the Alexandria governor accused al-Qaida, pointing to the terror network’s branch in Iraq, which has carried out a string of attacks on Christians there and has threatened Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christian community as well.
Egypt’s government has long insisted that the terror network does not have a significant presence in the country, and it has never been conclusively linked to any attacks here. If al-Qaida was involved, it raises the prospect of a serious new security threat within Egypt.
……It was dramatically different from past attacks on Christians, which included shootings but not serious bombings, much less suicide attacks. Christians have increasingly blamed the government for not taking violence against them or anti-Christian sentiment among Muslim hard-liners seriously.
In the wake of the New Year’s bombing, they unleashed their rage at authorities.
“Now it’s between Christians and the government, not between Muslims and Christians,” shrieked one Christian woman as several hundred young men clashed with helmeted riot police in the street outside the targeted church hours after the blast. As the rioters threw stones and bottles, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them. Some of the protesters beat Muslim passers-by.
Nearly 1,000 Christians were attending the midnight Mass at the Saints Church in the Mediterranean port of Alexandria, said Father Mena Adel, a priest at the church. The service had just ended, and some worshippers were leaving the building when the bomb went off about a half hour after midnight, he said.
“The last thing I heard was a powerful explosion and then my ears went deaf,” Marco Boutros, a 17-year-old survivor, said from his hospital bed. “All I could see were body parts scattered all over — legs and bits of flesh.”
Blood splattered the facade of the church, a painting of Jesus inside, and a mosque across the street. The blast mangled at least six cars on the street, setting some ablaze. As bodies were taken away after daybreak, some in the congregation waved white sheets with the sign of the cross emblazoned on them with what appeared to be the victim’s blood.
Health Ministry spokesman Abdel-Rahman Shahine said the death toll stood at 21, with 97 wounded, almost all Christians. Among the wounded were the three policemen and an officer guarding the church.
……Alexandria, the famed city of antiquity which a century ago Egypt’s most cosmopolitan city with a mix of Muslims, Christians and foreigners, has become a stronghold for Islamic hard-liners the past decade. Stabbings at three Alexandria churches in 2006 sparked three days of Muslim-Christian riots that left at least four dead, though it’s seen little violence since.
……The bombing was the deadliest violence involving Christians in Egypt since at least 20 people, mostly Christians, were killed in sectarian clashes in a southern town in 1999. In the most recent significant attack, seven Christians were killed in a drive-by shooting on a church in southern Egypt during celebrations for the Orthodox Coptic Christmas a year ago.
Eruptions of Muslim-Christian violence are often intermeshed with local tribal or personal disputes. But many Christians also blame rising Islamic extremism and anti-Christian sentiment and accuse the government of always pointing the finger at lone renegades or mentally ill people to avoid addressing sectarian problems and possibly angering Muslims.
Archbishop Raweis, the top Coptic cleric in Alexandria, denounced what he called a lack of protection.
“There were only three soldiers and an officer in front of the church. Why did they have so little security at such a sensitive time when there’s so many threats coming from al-Qaida?” he said, speaking to the AP.
The possibility of involvement by al-Qaida or its sympathizers introduces a dangerous new element.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110101/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt_church_attack
Hosni Mubarak gives a lot of lip service to cracking down on the atrocities committed by his fellow muslims, but it’s always been open season on Christians in the Middle East.
The Christians are pissed and they’ve had it with the terrorism in the name of allah. I’d like to see reciprocity; for every Christian attacked and killed and every church that is bombed a muslim should be killed and a mosque should be leveled. Maybe then, the Islamic pigs will understand that their jihad has consequences.
UPDATE:
And wouldn’t ya know it, Obama injected a fabricated contingent of muslim victims.
Hat tip to Ace of Spades.
What is wrong with this man? Is his worldview so dependent on believing that Muslims are a victim class that he simply cannot help but create Muslim victims in an attack on Christians?Yesterday morning at a midnight mass celebrating the new year, a car bomb exploded outside a Coptic Christian church in Egypt. There were 21 fatalities and 79 injured. All of the dead and all but 8 of the injured were Christian worshipers at the church. Al Qaeda is suspected and the attack is similar to others that have occurred against Christian churches in Iraq.Inexplicably, the President issued a statement inventing “dozens” of Muslim victims:
“The attack on a church in Alexandria, Egypt caused 21 reported deaths and dozens of injured from both the Christian and Muslim communities.”
A few weeks ago I was struck by how far off liberals, and the President in particular, have drifted from reality when it comes to the victimhood of the Muslim community. Remember back during the Ground Zero Mosque fight the daily reports of violence, vandalism, and vitriol against Muslims in America? If you only knew what you heard from the liberal media, you’d probably be justified in believing that Muslims were living under siege in this country. The Muslim victimhood meme would make sense to you.But the truth is that Muslims in this country are far less likely to be targeted because of their religion than are, for example, Jews. By an order of magnitude. In 2009, there were roughly two and a half bias crimes against Jews per day. No wonder the President has to make up crimes against Muslims both here and abroad. How will he convince libtards that Muslims deserve special treatment if they’re not a major victim class?
http://minx.cc/?post=310093
The DemLeft hates America and everything it stands for. Period. Obama has always had a hard on for radical communist agenda and Islamic doctrine. He treats the muslims as a noble “oppressed underclass” fighting against a Judeo/Christian/Capitalist satan. Therefore, he feels the need to concoct a non-existent segment of muslims who are victims of their violent brethren.
As the post at Ace Of Spades points out, the daily atrocities against Jews, Christians, and other “infidels” by muslims, makes Obama’s doting behavior that much more of a sick joke.
B. Hussein is such a worthless dickbag. But then, we already knew that.