Cairo - An Egyptian health ministry official said on state television that a large number of children were among the victims of a gun attack on Christians in Minya earlier on Friday. Gunmen attacked two busloads of Coptic citizens on the way to a monastery in southern Egypt, killing at least 28 people and wounding 25 others. Gunmen attacked the buses as well as a truck taking the group of Copts to a monastery in southern Egypt on Friday, killing 26 people and wounding 25 others, witnesses and the Health Ministry said. An Interior Ministry spokesperson said the gunmen had arrived in three four-wheel-drive vehicles. Eyewitnesses said masked men stopped the two buses and a truck and opened fire on a road leading to the monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in Minya province, which is home to a sizeable Christian minority. Security forces launched a hunt for the attackers, setting up dozens of checkpoints and patrols on the desert road. The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Egypt's 1,000-year-old center of Islamic learning, said the attack was intended to destabilize the country. "I call on Egyptians to unite in the face of this brutal terrorism," Ahmed al-Tayeb said from Germany, where he was on a visit. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi called an emergency meeting of security officials, the state news agency said. The Health Ministry put the toll at 26 dead and 25 wounded. Coptic Christians, who make up about 10% of Egypt's population of 92 million, have been the subject of a series of deadly attacks in recent months. About 70 have been killed since December in bomb attacks on churches in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Tanta. Those attacks were claimed by Islamic State. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attack.
