CAIRO – Three suspects in a drive-by shooting that killed six Christians and a Muslim guard in an attack on Coptic Christmas Eve were captured by police Friday.
Egyptian security forces had blanketed the area between the village of Farshout and the town of Nag Hamadi, where the slayings occurred early Thursday, and flushed the suspects out of dense sugar cane fields, the state MENA news agency reported.
Early Thursday, gunmen opened fire on a crowd of worshippers leaving midnight Mass for Coptic Orthodox Christmas Eve.
The Interior Ministry called the shooting revenge for the alleged rape of a 12-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man in the town.
The attack was the worst to target Christians in Egypt in nearly a decade.
Copts, descendants of the original inhabitants of Egypt, make up most of the 8 million Christians in this country of 80 million people.
The Associated Press
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