Hundreds of Christians left the Egyptian town of Al-Arish in northern Sinai after the third Copt in a week was gunned down on 23 February, reportedly by militants linked to so-called Islamic State (IS).
The mass exodus comes after three Coptic Christians were killed in what appears to be the work of militants making good on IS threats issued on a 19 February video promising to rid the country of ‘idolaters’. The latest slaying was the seventh killing of a Copt in Sinai in a month.
Reports differ on how Kamel Youssef was killed but, according to the Associated Press, militants stormed his Al-Arish home then shot and killed him in front of his family. Two days earlier, the body of Saied Hakim, 65, was found late at night in Al-Arish behind a state-run language school, where he was ambushed by masked gunmen. Hakim was shot in the head several times.
Medhat Saied, 45, Hakim’s son, was abducted and burned alive, his body found in the same place as his father’s, according to local media reports.
No one has claimed responsibility for the three killings, but the consensus is that ‘Wilayat Sinai’, the Sinai Province branch of IS previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, killed the men in a quest to terrorise Christians and push them out of the region. In the 20-minute video, IS vowed to kill all Christians in Sinai and to ‘liberate Cairo’ from ‘idolaters.’
In the video, a masked speaker clad in camouflage makes his threats clear: ‘We will chase you. We will put an end to you. You won’t escape from us.’
