Explosion at Coptic church in Misrata kills two

By Maha Ellawati. 

Benghazi, 30 December:

An explosion near the Coptic Orthodox Church in Misrata late yesterday evening killed two Egyptian men and left another three injured.

The explosion, reported to have been caused by a bomb, targeted a services building connected to the church in the city of Misrata, killing the Egyptian nationals and wounding three others at the same time.

News broke this morning when the Egyptian embassy in Tripoli received a call from Fr. Timotheus Bishara Adla, head of the Coptic Church in the Libyan captital, informing them that the church building in Misrata had been targeted by an explosion, Foreign Ministry spokesman Amru Rushdi said today.

Egypt’s Chargé d’Affaires in Libya, Hatim Abdel Qader, immediately contacted Fr. Marcus Zaghloul, head of the church in Misrata, to check on the welfare of the other church members. The embassy’s consul in Misrata, Tariq Dahroug, also visited the church to inspect the damage.

Staff at the Egyptian embassy in Tripoli have contacted the Interior and Foreign Ministries to hold urgent discussions about improving security arrangements around Coptic churches in Libya.

At the moment, it is not known who targeted the church or why they carried out the attack in Misrata yesterday.