The police investigation into a New Year’s church bombing that killed 21 people is focusing on a local group of Islamic hard-liners inspired by al-Qaida, Egyptian security officials said Sunday.
The suicide attack in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria struck Coptic Christian worshippers as they were leaving midnight Mass Saturday about 30 minutes into the new year and also wounded about 100. Dozens returned to pray Sunday in the blood-spattered Saints Church, many of them sobbing, screaming in anger and slapping themselves in grief.
Christians staged demonstrations in at least three cities to protest what they see as the government’s failure to protect their community, but police moved quickly to break up the gatherings. In Alexandria, about 200 Christians staged a noisy protest near the bombed church. Riot police outnumbered them by at least two to one and prevented them from moving elsewhere.
“We are not going to remain silent,” chanted the demonstrators. “Oh Mubarak, the hearts of the Copts are on fire,” they said in a message for President Hosni Mubarak. There were other demonstrations in the capital Cairo and one in Assiut in southern Egypt.
In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI said the attack “offends God and all of humanity.”
No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing. In the immediate aftermath, Mubarak blamed foreigners and the Alexandria governor accused al-Qaida, pointing to threats against Christians by the terror network’s branch in that country.
But on Sunday, security officials said police are looking at the possibility that Islamic hard-liners based in Alexandria were behind the attack, and perhaps were inspired by al-Qaida though not directly under a foreign command.
Investigators were also examining lists of air passengers who arrived recently in Egypt from Iraq because of the threats by the al-Qaida branch there against Christians in both Egypt and Iraq. They said they are looking for any evidence of an al-Qaida financier or organizer who may have visited Egypt to recruit the bomber and his support team from among the ranks of local militants.
Investigators were also examining two heads found at the site on suspicion that at least one was the bomber’s, state news agency MENA reported.
The security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation has not yet been completed, also said 25 people have been detained for questioning, but none of them was thought to be linked to the attack. They said the 25 were mostly owners of cars parked outside the church at the time, storekeepers and Muslim neighbors known to be Islamic fundamentalists.
Egypt’s government has long insisted that al-Qaida does not have a significant presence in the country, and it has never been conclusively linked to any attacks here.
Egypt does, however, have a rising movement of Islamic hard-liners who, while they do not advocate violence, adhere to an ideology similar in other ways to al-Qaida. There have been fears they could be further radicalized by sectarian tensions. The hard-liners, known as Salafis, have a large and active presence in Alexandria.
The security officials cautioned that the culprits may not necessarily be from the ranks of the Salafis but more likely came from small, fringe groups that are even more radical.
During the Mass on Sunday, authorities deployed heavy security outside the Saints Church, including riot police backed by armored vehicles. Riots erupted Saturday in Alexandria when Christians, accusing authorities of not doing enough to protect the minority group, clashed with police and Muslims.
“We spend every holiday in grief,” said Sohair Fawzy, a woman who attended the Mass Sunday and who lost two sisters and a niece in the attack.
Inside the church, the floor was still stained with blood, two statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary were toppled and benches were scattered by the impact of the blast. A red foam sign that read “2011” on the church’s door was torn apart. A wooden cross hanging on the church gate was covered with a white sheet stained with victims’ blood and bits of human flesh remained stuck on the gate. Young Christian men prevented cleaners from removing the flesh.
“Leave them. This is pure blood,” one of the men shouted.
Father Maqar, who led the service, did not give a sermon, preferring to express his grief with silence.
“I tell Christians to pray and pray to ease their agony,” he told The Associated Press after the service.
Egypt’s top Muslim cleric, Grand Sheik of al-Azhar Ahmed el-Tayeb, visited Pope Shenouda III, spiritual leader of Egypt’s Orthodox Copts, at his Cairo headquarters on Sunday to offer his condolences. Several dozen Christian demonstrators tried to block his car as he was leaving but were prevented by security guards.
Suspicion for the attack immediately fell on al-Qaida after the terror group’s branch in Iraq vowed to attack Christians in anger over the cases of two Egyptian Christian women who sought to convert to Islam. The women, who were married to priests in the Coptic Orthodox Church, were prohibited from divorcing their husbands and sought to convert as a way out.
Al-Qaida in Iraq cited the Egyptian women in a claim of responsibility for the attack on a Baghdad church in October that killed 68 people.
The two women at the center of the threats have since been secluded by the Coptic Church, prompting Islamic hard-liners in Egypt to accuse the Church of imprisoning them and forcing them to renounce Islam. The Church denies the allegation.
Al-Qaida in Iraq has also threatened Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christian community over the two cases and the church attacked was for Orthodox Copts.
The attack was the worst against Egypt’s Christian minority in a decade. It stoked tensions that have grown in recent years between Christians and the Muslim majority. It was dramatically different from past attacks on Christians, which included shootings but not serious bombings, much less suicide attacks. Christians have increasingly accused the government of dismissing violence against them or anti-Christian sentiment among Muslim hard-liners.
Christians, mainly Orthodox Copts, make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s mainly Muslim population of nearly 80 million people, and they have increasingly complained about discrimination. In November, hundreds of Christians rioted in the capital, Cairo, smashing cars and windows after police violently stopped the construction of a church. The rare outbreak of Christian unrest in the capital left two people dead.
Alexandria, the famed city of antiquity which a century ago was home to a mix of Muslims, Christians, Jews 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.