Egypt looking for answers after 24 are killed in violence

Story by The Takeaway. Listen to audio above for full report.

Some 24 people have died after a crash between Coptic Christians and the Egyptian police and military, calls are growing for a swift investigation. And many Egyptian people have returned to the streets in protest.

The tumult started with a burning of a Coptic Christian church in Aswan province. Copts make up about 10 percent of the population in Egypt and they’re angry the government isn’t doing more to protect them from violence. As thousands of protesters gathered, Egyptian forces attacked. 

“What is extremely horrifying is that when military soldiers driving armored vehicles panicked, they just crashed their vehicles into the demonstrators,” said Youssef Sidhom, editor of a Coptic newspaper in Cairo. “Whoever fell was trapped under the wheels of these armored vehicles.”

Sidhom said that no matter how brutally the Copts are treated, it’s crucial that they don’t abandon the government in order to save “their Egypt” and to keep militant Islam at bay.

David Kirkpatrick, Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times, said the clashes saw a campaign of misinformation. State television implored “honest Muslims” to come out and defend the Egyptian army from the protesters. And some did. But others turned out to defend the Christians from the army.

“What was distinctive yesterday was this became really a clash over the military rule that is in place in Egypt,” Kirckpatrick said. “This wasn’t really a clash between Muslim civilians and Christian civilians. It was about the military.”

In the wake of the clash, many Egyptians, both Christians and Muslims, have returned to the streets in protest of the military’s actions.

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