05 June, 2017
Masked gunmen in military fatigues opened indiscriminate fire on vehicles carrying Coptic Christians in Egypt on Friday, killing at least 28 people, many of them children, the second major attack on the country's largest minority community in nearly two months. The jihadist training camps were hit in the eastern Libyan city of Derna.
'Terrorists are engaged in a war against civilisation, and it is up to all who value life to confront and defeat this evil, ' US President Donald Trump said in a statement.
Sisi, in his address, asserted that "if Egypt falls, the whole world will be in chaos".
"The bloodletting of Christians must end, and all who aid their killers must be punished", he said in a statement.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State terror group has previously attacked Egypt's Coptic Christians. A source in Haftar's Libyan National Army told Reuters that they had coordinated with Egyptian counterparts to strike ammunition stores belonging to the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council, an Islamist umbrella group that opposes Islamic State.
There have been a number of attacks on Coptic Christians in the country in recent months claimed by Islamic State militants.
President Tony Tan and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong have written to President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi of the Arab Republic of Egypt and Prime Minister Sherif Ismail respectively to offer their condolences over Friday's (May 26) attack on Coptic Christians in Minya, Egypt, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The attack, which took place on the eve of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, was the fourth to target Egypt's Christian minority since December.
The last time the monument's lights were turned off was on May 23, in tribute to the 22 persons killed and dozens wounded in the terror attack in Manchester, United Kingdom. In December, a suicide bomber struck a church in Cairo, killing 29 Copts.
Persecution of Egypt's Christians has spiked since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak's regime in 2011, and as an ISIS affiliate wages an insurgency on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
