ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack which "riddled the bus" with machine gun fire.

Twenty eight people including children died in the attack. Another 22 were injured. At least one of the victims was visiting Egypt from the UK.

Pope Francis offered his prayers for the victims and their grieving families. He condemned the attack as "barbaric" and urged Egypt to join in reconciliation with the victims.

In his message to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Francis said he was "deeply saddened to learn of the barbaric attack in central Egypt and of the tragic loss of life and injury caused by this senseless act of hatred."

This is a "new crime added to the criminal record of a murderers' gang," Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group said.

It called for a "strong and frank stance in the face of terrorism that takes religion as a cover."

Hezbollah added that these acts of terrorism should be fought so the "world does not go toward a precipice to which those criminals want to take it".

This was the latest attack on Copts after Islamic State jihadists bombed three churches in December and April, killing dozens of Christians.

Source

• News24
• BBC News
• Image: Time Magazine

He said the attacks are part of the "war on infidels" IS is fighting.

He also claimed his group was responsible for the suicide bombings that struck two Coptic Christian churches on Palm Sunday. Forty-seven people died and many more were injured.

Speaking in an interview published in the IS al-Nabaa newsletter last week, the spokesperson urged all Muslims to work as jihadists.

They should focus on "legitimate targets" like churches and security posts, as well as "places where crusader nationals of western countries gather".

If Muslims don't join jihadist groups, they should carry out "lone wolf attacks," he said.

He also said Muslims who don't attack Christians are antagonistic to the Islamic religion, are apostate and had better "hurry up and repent".

Coptic Christians in Egypt have been targeted by IS jihadists for several decades.

The Palm Sunday attacks prompted Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to declare a state of emergency for the next three months.

Source

• ABC News
• Crux
• Image: Citizens

Bishop Angaelos who is the head of the Coptic church in the UK, says for example many Coptic Christians in the North Sinai have been forced out of their homes.

They were told by ISIS to "leave or die".

Angaelos says despite the violence shown to Christians we need to act as Christ would.

This means we need to avoid aggressiveness and anti-Islamic rhetoric, which ends up adversely affecting people in the region.

During the past three months alone over 40 Coptic Christians in Egypt have been martyred.

Their killers: militants aligned with the Islamic State terror group that has been waging war against Egypt's forces in the Sinai Peninsula for the past five years.

Angaelos says Christians in the region have reacted very peacefully and nonviolently, even to the extent of forgiving.

What Western Christian need to do first is to pray for them, he says.

"Secondly, [it's important for Western Christians] to keep this message of support and solidarity alive.

"The fact that incidents come off our news feed doesn't mean they cease to exist.

"... Christians [need] to feel that they are most certainly members of the wider body of Christ and that they are not isolated in a certain region of the world, Angaelos says.

Source

• National Catholic Register
• Assyrian International News Agency
• Image: Catholic Herald

Martyrdom was not new to them or their people. For nearly two thousand years, their Church had prided itself as being the Church of the Martyrs.

If martyrdom was a central feature of the early Church, it had become the hallmark of its identity in Egypt.

Even as early as the third century, a quote attributed to Tertullian declared: "If the martyrs of the whole world were put on one arm of the balance and the martyrs of Egypt on the other, the balance would tilt in favour of the Egyptians."

From the blood of Saint Mark the Evangelist shed in Alexandria in 68 AD, the river continued to flow, each century adding its martyrs.

The names of the persecutors had changed; Romans and Byzantines and Arabs, Emperors and Caliphs and Kings. Each had contributed his share, each had attempted to end their faith, and each in turn had failed.

The horrific murder of twenty Copts and a Ghanaian Christian at the hands of Islamic State militants in Libya in February was followed by swift condemnations from around the world. Most world leaders described the victims the way they identified themselves - as Coptic Christians.

Pope Francis recognised that they had been "killed simply for the fact that they were Christians," and that "their blood confesses Christ."

Their murderers certainly concurred. They had searched the workers' compoundlooking for Copts - "people of the cross" they named them in the video.

Their beheading was in revenge for Kamilia Shehata, the wife of a Coptic priest, who had briefly disappeared in July 2010 before returning to her family.

Soon her cause became a rallying cry for Egyptian Salafis convinced that she had been prevented from converting to Islam and held against her will by the Church. Continue reading

Source & Image:

• ABC Religion & Ethics

The warning came in a video apparently showing the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians next to the Mediterranean Sea in Libya.

In the video, an English-speaking militant said they are sending a message "from the south of Rome".

At the end of the footage, the same English-speaking fighter raises his knife to the water and says ISIS would "conquer Rome, with Allah's permission".

Also on the video, an Islamist says in English: "All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes, especially if you are fighting us all together.

"Therefore we will fight you all together . . . The sea you have hidden Sheikh Usama Bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah, we will mix it with your blood."

Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano said security precautions around the Vatican have been "very high".

After Mr Alfano met Vatican officials this week, Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the minister reported there are no specific threats against the Vatican.

Cardinal Parolin said that while there is "a media war on the part of ISIS", and jihadists frequently pledge to conquer Rome, there have been no concrete threats.

The cardinal concluded that Vatican officials should be "careful, vigilant, without falling into alarmism".

The head of the Swiss Guards said his forces are ready to protect Pope Francis if ISIS attempts a strike.

Colonel Christoph Graf said: "Following the terrorists' threats, we're asking the guards to be more attentive and observe peoples' movements closely.

"If something happens we're ready, as are the men of the Gendarmerie."

Last month, the Vatican played down media reports that it had been named as a probable next target for an Islamist attack.

According to the reports, Vatican authorities had received specific warnings from both Israel's Mossad and the US's CIA agencies regarding Pope Francis's safety.

But a Vatican spokesman responded at that time that the Holy See had received nothing "concrete and specific" about any attack plans.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• The Tablet
• The Independent
• National Catholic Reporter
• Daily Mail
• Catholic World News
• Image: International Business Times

Tensions are still running high more than two weeks after the attacks in the city some 250 kilometres (155 miles) south of Cairo but there have been no calls for vengeance, nor any fiery rhetoric.

"I say to the Islamists who attacked us that we are not afraid of their violence and their desire to exterminate the Copts," said Botros Fahim Awad Hanna, the archbishop of Minya.

"If we are not hitting back, it is not because we are afraid, but because we are sensible," he said.

Enraged by a bloody crackdown mid-August on protests in support of ousted president Mohamed Morsi in Cairo, Islamists lashed out at Coptic Christians in Minya, accusing them of backing the military that toppled the head of state.

The Copts, who account for some 10 million out of Egypt's population of 80 million, had already suffered persecution in recent years.

Meanwhile, Christians in Cairo told Catholic News Service the United States is taking the wrong side, with some, like 21-year-old Youssif, even accusing Washington of openly supporting terrorism.

Their concerns echo, almost to the word, Egypt's military and its new interim government's claims that Morsi was deposed by popular demand, that now-dismantled pro-Morsi camps in Cairo were armed, and that the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups with which Morsi was aligned are the ones behind a wave of attacks on state, security and Christian institutions around the country.

Obama has not termed the takeover a coup, though some U.S. lawmakers have. But Obama has condemned the forced dismantling of two pro-Morsi camps in Cairo Aug. 14, saying Washington supports "the right to peaceful protest."

Sources

AFP/Yahoo News

CNS/The Catholic Register

Huffington Post

Image: AFP/Yahoo News

"We reject any allegation that the Coptic Orthodox community has contributed to the production of this film," the Coptic Orthodox Archdiocese said in a statement Friday, denouncing the Copts who reportedly produced and promoted the film.

"Indeed, the producers of this film have taken these unwise and offensive actions independently and should be held responsible for their own actions."

The movie was filmed on a Hollywood set, and its permit has been linked to a Christian charity.

Joseph Nassralla Abdelmasih, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Morris Sadek, Coptic Christians who live in the United States, have emerged as the producers and promoters of the crude anti-Muslim film that depicts Islam's Prophet Muhammad as a bumbling sexual pervert.

The Vatican too has issued the "firmest possible condemnation".

Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi S.J., said that nothing can "justify the activity of terrorist organizations and homicidal violence."

Lombardi's first statement on the attacks that expressed sadness, mourning and the promise of prayers had been criticized as "outrageous" by Catholic commentator Phil Lawler.

"Four American diplomats are killed, and a Vatican spokesman responds not by condemning the killings but by insisting that we should respect the sensitivities of Muslims. Outrageous!" he wrote on the Catholic Culture website.

"The first order of business, for civilized people, is a clear, unequivocal, and absolute condemnation of the killings."

Nassralla heads a Christian charity, Nakoula is a convicted felon and Sadek is an incendiary activist. Coptic leaders said they are investigating what ties, if any, the men have to mainstream Copts in the United States.

Currently, and despite a request from the White House, Google does not plan to remove the anti-Muslim film, but will restrict access to it in certain countries.

Sources

• Huffington Post
• The Examiner
• Huffington Post
• Catholic Culture (opinion)
• Image: SMH