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Egyptian police identify Alexandria's church suicide bomber

Xinhua, April 12, 2017 Adjust font size:

The Egyptian interior ministry identified on Wednesday the suicide bomber who blew himself up in Saint Mark's Church in Egypt's Alexandria governorate on Sunday, killing 11 Christians and six Muslim police officers.

In a press statement, the ministry identified the suicide bomber as Mahmoud Hassan Mubarak from Suez City.

"The suicide bomber was born on Sept. 28, 1986 in Upper Egypt's city of Qena and worked for a petroleum company," the statement read.

On Sunday, twin suicide bombing at two churches in Delta province of Gharbiya and Alexandria province in northern Egypt killed at least 45 and wounded over 120.

The ministry added that the attacker is linked to an extremist Islamist terrorist group led by a wanted terrorist leader from Qena.

"This terrorist cell carried out a suicide attack last year against the Cathedral of Saint Mark in the Abbasia district in Cairo," according to the ministry.

The ministry also revealed that another cell working under the umbrella of the same group has attacked a police checkpoint in the New Valley governorate, killing a number of police men.

The ministry did not mention if this group belongs to the Islamic State (IS) group which claimed responsibility on Sunday for the bombings of two churches.

Egypt has been fighting a terrorist wave that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military removed former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and blacklisted his Muslim Brotherhood group as "a terrorist organization."

Mostly claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the IS regional militia, the terrorist attacks focused on security forces in restive North Sinai in the beginning; but after massive security raids that killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects, terrorists started to target the Coptic minority in the most populous Arab country.

Coptic Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's population. They have largely coexisted peacefully with the Muslim-majority public for centuries. Endit