{"id":7289,"date":"2017-04-09T11:54:06","date_gmt":"2017-04-09T16:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=7289"},"modified":"2017-04-09T11:54:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-09T16:54:06","slug":"explosion-in-church-in-egypts-nile-delta-kills-at-least-21-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/7289\/","title":{"rendered":"Explosion in church in Egypt\u2019s Nile delta kills at least 21 people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-7290 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/201749123316407504691_At-least-21-people-killed-by-an-explosion-in-a--300x168.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"598\" height=\"335\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/201749123316407504691_At-least-21-people-killed-by-an-explosion-in-a--300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/201749123316407504691_At-least-21-people-killed-by-an-explosion-in-a-.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 598px) 100vw, 598px\" \/><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Reuters, Apr 9, 2017<\/span> &#8211;<\/strong> At least 21 people were killed and more than 50 injured on Sunday by an explosion in a church in the Nile delta city of Tanta, Egyptian state television reported.<br \/>\nThere was no immediate claim of responsibility and the cause of the blast, just one week before Coptic Easter and the same month as Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Egypt, was not known.<br \/>\nIslamic State\u2019s branch in Egypt, which has waged a low-level conflict for years in the Sinai peninsula, has stepped up attacks on Christians in Egypt in recent months.<br \/>\nA suicide bombing at Cairo\u2019s largest Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people and wounded 49 in December, many of them women and children, in one of the deadliest attacks on Egypt\u2019s Christian minority in years. Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack.<br \/>\nA shift in Islamic State\u2019s tactics from attacking soldiers and police to targeting Christian civilians has become a potential turning point in a country trying to halt a provincial insurgency from spiraling into wider sectarian bloodshed.<br \/>\nEgypt\u2019s Christian community has felt increasingly insecure since Islamic State spread through Iraq and Syria in 2014, ruthlessly targeting religious minorities. In 2015, 21 Egyptian Christians working in Libya were killed by Islamic State.<br \/>\nCopts face regular attacks by Muslim neighbors, who burn their homes and churches in poor rural areas, usually in anger over an inter-faith romance or the construction of church.<br \/>\nTanta was also the site of another attack earlier this month when a policeman was killed and 15 were injured after a bomb exploded near a police training center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Reuters, Apr 9, 2017 &#8211; At least 21 people were killed and more than 50 injured on Sunday by an explosion in a church in <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/7289\/\" title=\"Explosion in church in Egypt\u2019s Nile delta kills at least 21 people\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-terrorism-fundamentalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7291,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7289\/revisions\/7291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}