Roundup: More Egyptian Copts flee Sinai militant attacks

Dozens of Egyptian Copts continued for the third day on Sunday fleeing militants in Arish city of restive North Sinai province to nearby Suez Canal province of Ismailia, following a series of jihadist attacks that killed at least six Copts in a month.

"We received in Ismailia so far about 95 families and more are continuing to arrive. The total Coptic families in Arish are about 500. From 130 to 150 families arrived and were rehoused in Ismailia and other provinces," Youssef Shoukry, a priest of Ismailia Orthodox Church, told Xinhua on Sunday.

The priest explained that some of them have been sheltered by the state and others by the church's social efforts, noting that the government spared no effort to help the displaced Copts.

Egypt has been intensifying efforts over the past couple of days to shelter the Copts moving from Sinai through a joint committee of the ministries of education, health, youth and social solidarity in coordination with destination governorates and their churches.

Copts constitute about 10 percent of Egypt's Muslim-majority 94-million population, yet there are no official statistics of the exact number.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi met with Prime Minisrter Sherif Ismail and several other ministers on Saturday and instructed the government to provide shelter and all necessary assistance to the displaced Copts.

"The president stressed the necessity to confront all attempts to disturb security and stability in Egypt and to eliminate all plots of such groups to terrorize the peaceful citizens," a presidential statement said after the meeting.

Later on Sunday, the president told visiting Commander of the U.S. Central Command Gen. Joseph L. Votel that the Egyptian state "spared no effort in combating terrorism and extremism."

Meanwhile, the Egyptian government announced on Sunday that it already rehoused 118 displaced Coptic families, including 96 in Ismailia, 12 in Upper Egypt's province of Assiut, eight in Qalioubiya province and two in the capital Cairo, according to official MENA news agency.

In Cairo, the members of the House of Representatives held a minute's silence to mourn the Coptic victims of terror attacks in Arish city of North Sinai.

Also on Sunday, President Sisi met with Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Islamic institution, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyib, and hailed Al-Azhar as "the lighthouse of moderate Islamic ideology." He also emphasized Al-Azhar's responsibility to present the real image of moderate Islam and denounce misleading and extremist ideologies.

Terrorist attacks have been growing in Egypt since the military removal of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and the later deadly crackdown on his supporters until blacklisting his Muslim Brotherhood group as a terrorist organization.

Most of the attacks over the past four years, which were claimed by a Sinai-based militant group affiliated with the regional Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, targeted hundreds of police and military men.

However, a suicide bomb attack on a church in Cairo last December that killed at least 29 Coptic worshippers, mostly women and children, marked a qualitative change in terrorist targets from security men to Christian civilians.

A recentely-circulated video on social media websites showed a masked IS militant referring to Copts in Egypt as the group's "main target and favorite catch." Endit