Protesters defy Coptic pope call to end Cairo sit-in

May 15, 2011, 17:00 GMT

Cairo - Thousands of protesters continued their sit-in in central Cairo Sunday calling for greater rights for Egypt's Christian minority, despite calls by the head of the Coptic Christian church for them to end their rally.

The protesters, mostly Coptic Christians, were staging a sit-in in front of the State Radio and Television building to demand greater rights and equality.

Coptic Pope Shenouda III called on Christians protesting in Cairo to end a sit-in, after the group was attacked by armed men overnight.

The attack left 78 people injured, a health official said. Some of them had gunshot injuries.

The pope, in a statement read on TV by one of his aides, said that some outsiders had infiltrated the group of protesters, making the situation more dangerous.

'Now there is fighting and gunshots, which harms Egypt's reputation as well as yours, so you must end your sit-in immediately,' he said.

Dozens of men threw Molotov cocktails at the protesters, who responded by throwing stones back at the attackers.

Police and army forces made around 28 arrests.

The sit-in started following heightened tension in Cairo after 15 Muslims and Christians were killed and over 230 injured in a severe clash between the two groups last week.

A church and three apartment buildings were set ablaze in the incident.

The violence between ultraconservative Muslim Salafists, Coptic Christians and others first erupted when Islamists marched to a church in the poor Cairo neighbourhood of Imbaba, where they believed that a young woman was being held hostage, possibly in an effort to get her to revoke a conversion to Islam.

The woman at the centre of the storm, Abeer Fakhry, later handed herself in to the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), which has been in control of the country since Mubarak stepped down.

The military council blamed remnants of Mubarak's regime for inciting the unrest in a bid to cause chaos in the country.

Violence between Muslims and Christians, once sporadic, has become a recurrent problem in recent months.

Coptic Christians make up 10 to 15 per cent of the country's population, which is predominantly Muslim.

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