CAIRO: In his weekly address to Coptic Christian worshipers, Pope Shenouda denied Coptic protesters were carrying weapons on Sunday when dozens of Egyptians were killed and hundreds injured when the armed forces guarding the state TV building attacked demonstrators with gun fire and ran over them with armored vehicles. The Egyptian ministry of health has said at least 26 were dead and over 300 injured. The Pope started his sermon by giving his condolences to the families of the dead and emphasized that the protesters were unarmed. “They were completely unnarmed according to the teachings of their non-violence religion,” Pope Shenuda said, addressing the few thousands of attendees at the Abbassiya Coptic Cathedral, where many of the dead were prayed for at funerals on Tuesday. “They walked for a long way from Shubra to Maspero in an open manner. If they had weapons it would have shown,” the Pope continued. “Their blood is not cheap to us,” he added. The church has already asked its followers to fast for three days and “ask God for mercy” over the dead and peace upon Egypt. Earlier on Wednesday, the ruling military council denied in a press conference that the armed forces used force against the demonstrators, saying the Coptic protesters started the violence and that they carried various weapons such as swords, knives and sticks. Copts who have long complained of government negligence and saw some change after the January 25 revolution, but after several sectarian clashes in the Nile Delta region and southern Egypt over the past few weeks, the scene is looking more grim than ever before in the country. On the night when violence broke outside the state TV building, Copts marched from the Shubra district in the thousands, denouncing the attack of a Coptic house of worship in the town of Edfu, Aswan, the week before. A group of conservative men attacked a building in Edfu, where Coptic Christian had been praying for years, saying the place had no permits. They set part of the building ablaze and eyewitnesses reported a number of attacks on Coptic homes and shops in the same city. Copts are roughly 10 percent of Egypt's 80 million strong population. BM
