Off the wire
• All Czech hospitals to provide palliative care after 2020: minister  • New device collects water from dry air by using sunlight: study  • Chinese consortium completes AC Milan takeover  • London mayor called to introduce bottle-deposit scheme to cut plastic waste  • Croatian, Italian ministers call for security, free movement  • Teenager injured in St. Petersburg explosion  • Libyan coastguards rescue immigrants, nearly 100 feared missing  • Nigeria engages international intermediaries to free Chibok girls  • Suspected pirates kill two Nigerian soldiers  • St. Petersburg expands recruitment of labor migrants from Central Asia to prevent terrorism  
You are here: 　 Home

Egypt's interior ministry identifies Tanta church suicide bomber

Xinhua, April 13, 2017 Adjust font size:

The Egyptian interior ministry revealed on Thursday the identity of the suicide bomber who blew himself up inside a church in the Egyptian Nile delta city of Tanta on Sunday, killing 28 Christians.

The ministry said in a press statement that the suicide bomber was identified as Mahmdouh Ameen Bughdadi who was born on June 25, 1977 in Upper Egypt's city of Qena.

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.

Meanwhile, the ministry said that the attacker is affiliated to an extremist group led by a wanted terrorist leader from Qena.

According to the ministry, this terrorist cell carried out a number of terrorist attacks in the country.

On Wednesday, the interior ministry revealed the identity of the suicide bomber who carried out the attack at Saint Mark's Church in Egypt's Alexandria governorate on Sunday and killed 11 Christians and six Muslim police officers.

The ministry added that the attacker is linked to an Islamist terrorist group; apparently the same group that carried out the church attack in Tanta.

However, 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 violence 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 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, the militants 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