Egypt: Potentially Deadly Church Attack Thwarted

One of dozens of churches attacked in recent years in Egypt.

A man hurled an improvised bomb at the entrance of a packed church in Egypt in what observers say could’ve been a repeat of the Two Saints Church attack in Alexandria, 2011, which left 23 dead, and 100 injured.

The bomb was dismantled before exploding.

The attack occurred during the late hours of Saturday, November 12. Thousands of Coptic Christian worshippers had assembled for a church celebration inside the St. George Church in Samalout, al-Minya province.

One Christian near the entrance saw an unknown man drive up on a motorbike, hurl the bomb at the church, before quickly riding away. Security agents were instantly contacted, even as one young Coptic man grabbed the bomb and rushed it away from the church’s premises. The congregation fled out of the church in what was described as a “tense” and “terrifying” night. The bomb squad arrived quickly and managed to dismantle the bomb before it detonated.

The St. George Church has stood for more than one hundred years in Samalout. Although the total church property is 1200 square meters, the church building is only 300 square meters. In an effort to accommodate Samalout’s thousands of Christians, church leaders have for seven years attempted to enlarge the church on its own property, as well as build a fence for protection, but authorities refuse to allow them.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

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Egypt Anti-Christianism

Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim, a specialist in Islamic history and doctrine, is the author of Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam (2022); Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (2018); Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013); and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). He has appeared on C-SPAN, Al-Jazeera, CNN, NPR, and PBS and has been published by the New York Times Syndicate, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Weekly Standard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst. Formerly an Arabic linguist at the Library of Congress, Ibrahim guest lectures at universities, briefs governmental agencies, and testifies before Congress. He has been a visiting fellow/scholar at a variety of Institutes—from the Hoover Institution to the National Intelligence University—and is the Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum and the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.