Islamic radicals attacked a bus in southern Egypt killing 26 Coptic Christians and wounding 26 more.

Masked gunmen attacked a group of Coptic Christians in southern Egypt on Friday, killing 26 people and wounding 26 others as they were driving to a monastery, medical sources and eyewitnesses said.

The group was traveling in two buses and a small truck in Minya province, which is home to a sizeable Christian minority, the sources said.

Provincial governor Essam al-Bedaiwy said earlier that 23 people had been killed and 25 wounded.

Eyewitnesses said the Copts were attacked as they were going to pray at the monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in the western part of the province.

They said masked men stopped the vehicles on a road leading to the monastery and opened fire.

Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 92 million, have been the subject of a series of deadly attacks in recent months.

About 70 have been killed in bomb attacks on churches in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Tanta since December.

Those attacks were claimed by Islamic State. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday’s attack.

Also, Dr. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Dallas, released the following statement, in response to Friday’s attack on Coptic Christians in Cairo:
“President Trump is right. This is a battle between good and evil and that evil aims to kill every Christian in the Middle East.  If the world doesn’t do more in defense of persecuted Christians we are going to see tens of thousands more die, quickly. Let’s be clear: Islamic terrorists want to do to Christians in Egypt exactly what they did to them in Iraq and in Syria. In fact, they are already doing it. Hundreds of families have already been displaced from North Sinai, and multiple suicide bombings have killed dozens already this year. Christians in the west must speak up more loudly for Christians in the east, and we mustn’t forget that the terrorists would kill everyone of us if they had the chance. Thank God we finally have a President who isn’t ashamed to raise his voice for persecuted Christians, but that’s not enough. The church must raise our voice as well because God’s word tells us ‘if one member of the body suffers, we all suffer.’ We join today in the Apostle Paul’s 2000-year-old prayer request for the persecuted church, ‘pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil people.’ (2 Thess. 3:2).”

Reuters copy/TRUNEWS contribution