Middle East: Egypt strikes Libya after deadly bus attack against Coptic Christians

Egypt's president says his air force struck bases in Libya where militants who waged a deadly attack against Christians have been trained, but gave no details.

Senior officials said that the bases are in eastern Libya. They said the warplanes on Friday targeted the headquarters of the Shura Council in the city of Darna, where local militias are known to be linked to al-Qaeda.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi says Egypt will strike at any bases that train militants who wage attacks in Egypt, wherever they may be. He also directly appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump to take the lead in the fight against global terror.

In a televised address just hours after at least 28 Coptic Christians, including two children, were killed by militants south of Cairo, el-Sissi said "I direct my appeal to President Trump: I trust you, your word and your ability to make fighting global terror your primary task."

He also repeated calls that countries that finance, train or arm extremists be punished.

Read more: Egypt strikes Libya after deadly bus attack against Christians - World - CBC News

Egypt: 28 Coptic Christians killed in bus attack just before Ramadan begins

Gunmen have attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christians in central Egypt, killing at least 28 people and wounding 25 others, officials say.

The bus was travelling to the Monastery of St Samuel the Confessor, 135km (85 miles) south of Cairo, from Minya province when it came under fire.

No group immediately said it was behind the attack.

But Islamic State (IS) militants have targeted Copts several times in recent months, and vowed to do so again.

Two suicide bombings at Palm Sunday services at churches in the northern cities of Alexandria and Tanta on 9 April left 46 people dead.

Another suicide bombing at a church in the capital in December killed 29 people, while a Christian community was forced to flee the town of el-Arish in the northern Sinai peninsula after a series of gun attacks in February.

Read more: Egypt Coptic Christians killed in bus attack - BBC News

Egypt’s coup: The second time around - Muslims, Coptic Christians, the rebel movement - not happy with the "Brothers"

President Morsi in better times

Egyptians like to think their blood is finer than the stuff that circulates in other veins. Along the Nile, someone with “heavy” blood is a dour, pedantic bore. To have “light” blood is to be quick-witted, cheeky and carefree. The national preference is for the light sort.

The hounding from power of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood leaves the most populous and influential Arab country in a dangerous state of flux, and it will have sweeping implications for politics across the Muslim world—Egypt has always been a bellwether for its region. Now that the army has shunted Mr Morsi aside, there is a real question as to whether the country will move towards a warmed-up version of military-backed rule or towards a more inclusive democracy. And with the ordinary people of Egypt empowered by the experience of revolution, that trajectory may be decided as much by how they aspire to see themselves and how they judge each other as by decisions made in barracks or smoky rooms.

Yet judging by the ecstatic roars with which the crowds in Tahrir Square have greeted flypasts by army helicopters, a great many Egyptians have decided to bury their doubts and ugly memories and accept the army’s intervention as in the national interest. With a 94% approval rate in one recent opinion poll, the army remains by far the most trusted institution in the country. Many believe the generals’ promise that they have no desire to linger in politics. Many also see them as better equipped than squabbling politicians to get Egypt’s revolution back on track.

These people yearn for a return to stability. They also long for a more comforting and inclusive notion of what it is to be Egyptian than the Brotherhood held. The Islamists’ rule posed questions about Egypt’s national identity that decades of dictatorship had buried. The underlying quandary was whether Egyptians should be defined chiefly by their faith, as Islamists see it, or rather as free participants in a pluralist society with shared values.

In the past, Egypt’s Islamists have proven most dangerous and prone to violence when shut out of the system. The country needs to find ways to avoid such exclusion this time—which, in the wake of a coup, may be hard. And reform of the parts of public life dominated by the army, always an important post-Mubarak goal, will now be more difficult than ever. For now, most Egyptians feel their own blood a little lighter. But given the depth of the challenges their country faces, they will need to find something to unite them that runs deeper than temperament and shared antipathy, and to dip into their traditional source of strength: patience.

Read more: Egypt’s coup: The second time around | The Economist