By The Daily Mail (UK) –
A Coptic priest has been stabbed to death in Egypt by a passerby outside a beach club on a popular seaside promenade.
The knifeman stabbed Arsanious Wadid, 56, three times in the Sidi Bishr area of the northern city of Alexandria on Thursday.
Wadid, who served as a priest in the city’s Meharam Bek district, was rushed to Mostafa Kamel Military hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
Egyptian security services arrested an elderly man who was allegedly seen stabbing the priest to death by several witnesses in Alexandria, Egypt’s interior ministry said.
The suspect reportedly ran away from the scene but was apprehended by local residents before police arrived.
Wadid was stabbed three times with a knife, with one stab wound severing a main artery in his neck.
The attack took place while Wadid was walking a group of boys from a beach club and back to a bus parked nearby, reports Abouna.org.
An investigation into the attack is underway and police are probing the motive behind the stabbing.
Sectarian violence is not uncommon in Egypt, where an Orthodox Christian minority, the Copts, is believed to be among the world’s oldest Christian communities.
Christians make up more than 10 per cent of Egypt’s mostly Muslim population.
Islamic extremists have also targeted Christians in the past.
Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyeb, who heads Egypt’s Al-Azhar – the highest institution of Sunni Islam in the Muslim world – condemned the attack, warning that such acts ‘might instigate religious wars’.
Wadid was ordained to the priesthood in 1995 by the late Pope Shenouda III, the former head of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
