Lethal religious riots flare up in Cairo

Hundreds of Christians and Muslims hurled stones at each other in downtown Cairo on Sunday, hours after Muslim mobs set fire to a church and a Christian-owned apartment building in a frenzy of violence that killed 12 people and injured more than 200.

Muslim youths attacked a large crowd of Coptic Christian protesters marching from the headquarters of Egypt's general prosecutor to the state television building overlooking the Nile, said Christian activist Bishoy Tamri. TV images showed both sides furiously throwing stones, including one Christian who held a large wooden cross in one hand while flinging rocks with another.

Scores were injured, but an army unit securing the TV building did nothing to stop the violence, Tamri said.

Hours earlier, mobs of ultraconservative Muslims attacked a church in the Cairo neighbourhood of Imbaba on the opposite side of the Nile. The attack was fuelled by rumours that a Christian woman married to a Muslim man had been abducted by the congregation. Residents said a separate mob of youths armed with knives and machetes attacked an apartment building several blocks away with firebombs.

"People were scared to come near them," said resident Adel Mohammed, 29, who lives near the Virgin Mary Church. "They looked scary. They threw their firebombs at the church and set parts of it ablaze."

Egypt's military reacted swiftly to the overnight church attack, sending 190 people to military trials. The armed forces said the mass arrests were to deter people from threatening the country's security. Military trials in Egypt are notorious for their speed.

Islamic clerics denounced the violence, sounding alarm bells at the escalating lawlessness and tension in the wake of former president Hosni Mubarak's Feb. 11 ouster by a popular uprising.

"These events do not benefit either Muslim or Copts," Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the sheik of al-Azhar, told the daily newspaper Al-Ahram.

During the 18-day uprising that ousted Mubarak, there was a rare spirit of brotherhood between Muslims and Christians. Each group protected the other during prayer sessions in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolution.

But in the months that followed, there has been a sharp rise in sectarian tensions, fuelled in part by a movement of ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafis who have become more active in Egypt.  

Christians, mainly Orthodox Copts, make up about 10 per cent of Egypt's mainly Muslim population of nearly 80 million people, and they have increasingly complained about discrimination.