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Cairo: A small bomb exploded near a revered
church on May 10, 2009 in the Egyptian capital but
caused no casualties or damage, police officials said.
The officials said late Sunday night's explosion was
caused by primitive bomb planted under a parked car near
Saint Mary Church in Cairo's Zeitoun district. The
church is one of the holiest sites for Egypt's Coptic
Christian minority because an apparition of the Virgin
Mary is believed to have appeared there in 1968.
The bomb went off around 9 p.m. and the car burst into
flames while a wedding was under way in the church,
causing a panic among passers by in the mainly Coptic
neighborhood, witnesses said.
"Shop owners closed their stores, and most people ran in
panic," said a pharmacist working in a near by drug
store. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of
government harassment for speaking about the attack.
Most shops in the neighborhood remained shut on Monday.
A police official said the bomb appeared to be intended
"to scare rather than to kill.”
Egypt's Christians, estimated at 10 percent of Egypt's
nearly 80 million people, often complain of
discrimination at the hands of the Muslim majority.
A government decision to slaughter all the pigs in the
country in reaction to the swine flu scare angered some
Christians, who argued that the order targeted their
community, which is the only one that raises or eats
pigs.
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