Copts: This Easter, a branch of Christianity faces threat to its existence

Targeting of Copts should be seen as a plan of IS to eliminate religious pluralism

In the run-up to Easter, it is customary for Egypt’s Coptic Christians to go to church every evening. Churches are packed with worshippers – as they were on Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017, when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the altar in a Coptic church in Tanta, about 90 miles north of Cairo, killing 29 people and injuring 71 – some of them gravely.

Three hours later, another suicide bomber tried to enter St Mark’s Church in Alexandria, where Pope Tawadros – the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church – was presiding. A police officer prevented