ISMAILIA, Egypt // Christian families and students have been fleeing Egypt’s North Sinai province in droves after ISIL killed the seventh member of their community in just three weeks.
Twenty-five families were seen gathered with their belonging at the Evangelical Church in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia on Friday, and church officials said 100 families – out of around 160 in North Sinai – had fled the province. More than 200 students studying in Arish, the capital of North Sinai, have also left.
Seven Christians were killed in Arish between January 30 and Thursday. ISIL, which is waging an insurgency in North Sinai, claimed responsibility for the killings, five of which were shootings. One man was beheaded and another set on fire.
“I am not going to wait for death,” said Rami Mina, who left Arish on Friday morning. “I shut down my restaurant and got out of there. These people are ruthless.”
Sectarian attacks occur often in Egypt but are usually confined to home burning, crop razing, attacks on churches, and forced displacement.
Arish residents said militants had circulated death lists online and on the streets, warning Christians to leave or die.
“My father is the second name on their list; anyone Christian they put on the list” said Munir Adel, a vegetable seller who fled his home in North Sinai on Friday. He sat huddled with four family members at the Evangelical Church, waiting for church officials to find them a place to stay.
Mr Adel’s parents did not leave Arish because of their old age, he said. “They could be killed at any moment.”
ISIL released a video on February 19 threatening Egypt’s Christians and vowing to escalate a campaign against them after it bombed a chapel adjoining Cairo’s St Mark’s Cathedral – the seat of the Coptic papacy – in December, killing 28 people.
“Oh crusaders in Egypt, this attack that struck you in your temple is just the first with many more to come, God willing,” said a masked man in battle-dress, who the group said blew himself up in the chapel.
Orthodox Copts, who make up about 10 per cent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are the Middle East’s largest Christian community. They have long complained of persecution.
The Coptic Orthodox Church on Friday denounced “the recurring terrorist incidents in North Sinai targeting Christian citizens”.
Referring to the killings, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El Sisi told military and police chiefs “to completely eradicate terrorism in northern Sinai and defeat any attempts to target civilians or to undermine the unity of the national fabric”, his office said on Thursday.
Egypt is battling an insurgency which gained pace in 2013 after its military, then led by Mr El Sisi, overthrew Islamist president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed.
Major General Mostafa Al Razaz, North Sinai’s deputy police chief, said security forces were capable of handling the “crisis” and had added more patrols and checkpoints.
But Christians in North Sinai say security forces on the ground are unable to protect them and are overwhelmed by the militants.
“The government does nothing. There is no security in Sinai, they can’t even protect themselves,” said Mr Adel.
“It was an officer who told us to leave.”
* Reuters