Gunmen killed at least seven Coptic Christians in Egypt as they were traveling on a bus near a monastery — the most serious assault on the religious minority in over a year.
The attackers “killed seven people and wounded 14, all of whom are in the Sheikh Fadel hospital in Beni Mazar” about 120 miles south of Cairo, Bishop Makarios of Minya told Agence France-Presse.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack near St. Samuel the Confessor monastery in Minya, but extremists linked to ISIS have regularly targeted Christians.
The attack took place near the spot where gunmen killed 28 Christians in a similar assault in May 2017.
“Terrorists opened fire on a tour bus from Sohag province, heading back from the … monastery,” the archbishop said.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he mourned the victims as martyrs and vowed to forge ahead with a campaign against jihadists.
“I assert our determination to fight dark terrorism and to pursue the perpetrators,” he said on Twitter.
Egypt has been waging a military and security campaign to crush militants behind a wave of attacks on security forces and civilians, including Christians.
Copts, a Christian minority that makes up 10 percent of Egypt’s 96 million people, have been repeatedly targeted by ISIS in recent years.
The terror group killed more than 40 people in twin church bombings in April 2017 and a month later shot dead 28 Christians in Minya province as they headed to a monastery on a bus.
The government imposed a three-month state of emergency across the country after the April 2017 church bombings.
In December 2017, an ISIS gunman killed nine people in an attack on a church in a south Cairo suburb.
A year earlier, a suicide bomber killed almost 30 worshipers at a church in Cairo located in the Saint Mark’s Cathedral complex, the seat of the Coptic papacy.
Egyptian troops launched a major offensive in February against ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula, where the group has waged a deadly insurgency since the fall of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
The jihadists also have killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers in Egypt in recent years and were allegedly behind a November 2017 attack against a Sinai mosque that killed more than 300 people.
The military offensive — Dubbed “Sinai 2018” — has killed more than 450 jihadists, while about 30 Egyptian soldiers have been killed during the operation.
The country said fighting Islamist militants is a priority to restore security after years of turmoil following the “Arab Spring” protests in 2011.
Egypt’s public prosecutor ordered a probe Friday and said he had sent a team of investigators to the location and to nearby hospitals.
With Post wires