Casualties feared as gunman attacks Helwan church

Now not not as a lot as 5 of us own been killed after a gunman opened fire on a Coptic church shut to the Egyptian capital, Cairo, Egypt’s health ministry mentioned.

The attacker wounded 5 security guards sooner than making an try to enter Marmina Church in Helwan City, south of Cairo, on Friday.

Safety forces later killed the gunman.

Local reports mentioned there used to be a second attacker, and claimed that policemen were amongst the victims.

Omar Ashour, a visiting professor of Safety learn at the Doha Institute, instructed Al Jazeera the attack used to be segment of an « ongoing crisis » in Egypt.

« It’s more continuity than commerce, we quiet need more cramped print to reach support up, however to this level Egypt has witnessed over 2,000 attacks in the leisure three years, » he mentioned.

« There are two disorders, one is the political crisis in Egypt which unfolded after 2013. That has not been resolved and or not it is setting up an increasing number of recruitment and radicalisation to armed groups of a mountainous amount of forms. »

« There might possibly be also in most cases a series of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism blunders which the Egyptian forces own been committing, and that is adding an increasing number of oil to the fire. »

No community has yet claimed accountability for the attack. 

The Islamic Deliver of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also frequently known as ISIS) has usually focused Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians this 300 and sixty five days.

In Can also, the armed community attacked Copts travelling to a monastery in central Egypt, killing 29 of us. A month earlier, 44 of us were killed in bomb attacks at a cathedral and one other church on Palm Sunday.