CAIRO: Egyptian authorities on Monday ordered the detention of a Muslim who entered a Cairo church with a knife, security sources said, days after another Muslim stabbed six Christians, killing one, in Alexandria. Police arrested the 25-year-old unemployed man on Sunday when he went into the church in the Egyptian capital, where Coptic Christians were celebrating Palm Sunday. Prosecutors ordered on Monday that he be held for four days for questioning on suspicion of intending to commit a crime. The knife attack on Friday in an Alexandria church provoked clashes between Christians and Muslims in the city on Egypt s northern coast on the following two days. A Muslim was clubbed over the head and died in the violence and 55 people were arrested. The government says the Alexandria attacker is mentally ill, but Copts have said the authorities are trying to make excuses for what some see as increasing attacks on Christians.
An Interior Ministry official has said the man arrested in Alexandria said he was taking revenge for insults to the Prophet Mohammed, apparently a reference to cartoons of the Prophet published in a Danish newspaper and elsewhere. In October, three people died in Alexandria in clashes with police during protests by Muslims over a church play which they said was offensive to Islam. Coptic Christians comprise between five and 10 percent of Egypt s 73 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslim. There are occasional outbreaks of violence between Egyptian Christians and Muslims. In 1999, 22 people were killed in communal strife in southern Egypt. Reuters
