On Friday 2 November, a group of Coptic Christians pilgrims were killed by gunmen as they were heading to the Saint Samuel Coptic Christian monastery, close to Minya, about 270km south of Cairo. Terrorists, who used secondary dirt roads to reach the buses full of Coptic Christian visitors, opened fire and killed 7 people and wounded at least 19, according to an Interior Ministry spokesperson. In 2017, a similar attack, targeting the same community and at the same spot, killed 28 people. After the Islamic State, that has repeatedly vowed to go after Egypt’s Christians as punishment for their support of president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, stated it was behind the attack, el-Sisi condemned it and stressed the need to carry on with the fight against terrorism. On his twitter account, he stated: “This incident will not undermine the will of our nation to continue its battle for survival and construction”. Later on Sunday 4 October, Egyptian Interior Ministry confirmed that 19 terrorists suspected to be responsible for the attack were killed by the police in a shoot-out after police pursued them into the desert area west of Minya province.