Gunmen in Egypt attack bus carrying Christians, killing at least 8 and wounding 13

Gunmen said to be from ISIS terrorists opened fire on a bus carrying worshipers returning from a remote Coptic Christian monastery in upper Egypt on Friday, killing at least eight and wounding 13, said a top religious leader and local officials.

Gunmen said to be from ISIS terrorists opened fire on a bus carrying worshipers returning from a remote Coptic Christian monastery in upper Egypt on Friday, killing at least eight and wounding 13, said a top religious leader and local officials.

“Terrorists opened fire on a bus carrying people,” Coptic Christian Archbishop Makarious of Minya, a town roughly 150 miles south of Cairo, said in a phone interview. The pilgrims, said community leaders, were returning from a visit to Saint Samuel the Confessor Monastery in a remote patch of Egypt’s western desert.

Six of those killed were from the same family, according to a post on the Facebook page of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt.

On Friday evening, Egypt’s Islamic State affiliate, which has vowed to target the nation’s minority Coptic Christians, claimed responsibility for the attack through its Amaq news service.