Egyptian police clashed overnight with a group of young men who had tried to stop Christians starting work on a new church in southern Egypt, a security source said on Thursday. Twelve people were wounded in the clashes in the village of el-Udaysaat near the southern town of Luxor, about 500 km (300 miles) south of Cairo. The Christians called the police when the group set fire to building materials with which they planned to turn a house into a church. They did not have official permission to build the church, the source said. Police arrested 10 young men and the owners of the house.
Restrictions on building churches have been one of the main grievances of Egypt's Coptic Christian community, which accounts for up to 10 percent of the population. |