The alleged perpetrators and other Christians took shelter inside a Coptic church, Osman said.
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These include migrant workers from Egypt, where Coptic Christians are the biggest religious minority.
Unlike the Middle East's other dwindling Christian communities, the 1, 700-year-old Coptic church remains vibrant.
Al Qaeda and the Mullahs did not even need the excuse of the Coptic film maker.
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The interim military government has abetted efforts to punish and even kill the Coptic Christian minority.
Many of its pharaonic, Coptic Christian, Islamic and other artefacts have spent years in storage in the basement.
That honor goes to His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, the 118th pope of the Coptic Church of Egypt.
Since then, the price of greater freedom seems to have fallen disproportionately on the large Coptic Christian minority.
It led to hundreds of Muslim villagers going on the rampage, looting Coptic shops and setting property alight.
Egypt's Coptic Christians have been under continuous attack by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist supporters since Mubarak was deposed.
But two of Egypt's 31 cabinet ministers are Coptic, as are many of the country's more prominent businessmen.
Coptic Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's estimated 90 million people.
Ethiopia's Orthodox Church used to be part of Egypt's Coptic Christian Church, but got its own patriarch in 1959.
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NDP's ageing leadership, among them some Coptic Christians and his 37-year-old son Gamal.
Mr Morsi denounced the violence in a phone call to Pope Tawadros II, the head of the Coptic Christian Church.
However, on the streets of Alexandria and Cairo, the crowds of Coptic protesters have been in no mood to hold hands.
Members of Egypt's 10% Coptic Christian community show growing discomfort with the 87-year-old Pope Shenouda, a staunch supporter of Mr Mubarak.
Nor has it been especially apparent in the waves of Islamist-instigated pogroms that have swept Egypt's Coptic community in recent years.
Egypt's Coptic Christians, already reeling from a recent upsurge in sectarian violence, fear that they will be treated as second-class citizens.
The German interior ministry says members of the Coptic church expressed their concerns even before the New Year's Day suicide attack.
Perhaps most annoying to Egypt's prickly security agents, Mr Ibrahim was outspoken about the need to air the grievances of Egypt's 5m Coptic Christians.
In 1998, the town sprang briefly out of obscurity when local police arrested some 500 of its 40, 000, mostly Coptic, residents.
Restrictions on the building of churches were relaxed, and lands confiscated from the Coptic church after the 1952 revolution were returned.
The leader of Egypt's Coptic Christians has accused the country's president of "negligence" following deadly clashes outside the main cathedral in Cairo.
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Wagner was a sterling linguist who said his post-examination project was to learn Coptic as a prelude to the study of Egyptian.
In one case there were rumours that a woman who had converted from Christianity to Islam had been abducted by her Coptic family.
Clashes between Muslims and Coptic Christians have been seen numerous times since then, but this weekend's violence was the worst seen in several months.
It was a brief moment of respite for the Coptic community, which is deeply concerned about the growing power of the Islamists in Egypt.
Boxed in by police controls and distrusted by secular Egyptians and the large Coptic Christian minority, the Muslim Brotherhood failed to win new converts.
Ms Eweida, a Coptic Christian from Twickenham in south-west London, was asked to leave her job in 2006 after refusing to remove her cross.
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