Egypt says 2 involved in Minya bus attack killed

Egypt's interior ministry on Saturday (December 8th) announced it had killed two other members of the cell involved in an attack that killed seven Christians south of Cairo in early November, Egypt’s Ahram Online reported.

This comes as a continuation of the ministry's efforts to pursue those responsible for the attack, the statement said.

On November 3rd, the ministry announced it had killed 19 gunmen involved in a November 2nd ambush in which gunmen opened fire on two buses carrying Copts near the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor in Minya.

On Saturday, security forces tracked the perpetrators to a hideout in a mountainous region west of Upper Egypt's Assiut governorate, near the area of Dashlout/Farafra, the ministry said.

The area was raided in co-ordination with the armed forces, and two extremists -- known as Abu Musab and Abu Sohaib -- were killed in the attack, the ministry said.

Security forces found three automatic rifles and a large quantity of bullets at the site, and seized a vehicle that belonged to the militants and a mobile phone that belonged to one of the men who had been killed in the bus attack.

The "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

"Security agencies have recently boosted their intelligence-gathering capabilities to confront terrorists’ movements," Egyptian MP Nader Mostafa told Al-Mashareq.

The terror cell which carried out the attack against the Copts was targeted one day after the attack, he said.

"Co-ordination between all security agencies is at the highest level," he said, noting that this has led to the conduct of pre-emptive strikes targeting terror cells in several governorates across Egypt to protect the country against potential terror attacks.