A day after mass funerals for Coptic Christians killed by the Egyptian army during Sunday night's protests, some in Cairo blamed outside agitators for the violence and said the country had a history of sectarian harmony.
(SOUNDBITE)(Arabic) EGYPTIAN WOMAN, NAWAL FATHI SALEH:
"When we were growing up, as children, my mother would leave us at our Coptic friends' and neighbours' houses. What happened is something that was plotted because of the elections, and because of foreign agendas… but we have never differentiated between Christian and Muslim."
(SOUNDBITE)(Arabic) EGYPTIAN MAN, ABDUL MOHSEN:
"I swear that what happened at Maspiro has nothing to do with Egypt at all. All of our lives we have been together, Muslims and Christians, and there is no discrimination at all. Millions of problems have happened before and they were solved within a few hours. What happened is totally foreign to us, and God help us to find out where this came from."
At least 25 people were killed when troops broke up a protest over an earlier attack on a church in southern Egypt, with television stations showing footage of armoured personnel carriers driving into groups of demonstrators.
Many in the Coptic community expressed rage at the military council ruling Egypt.
But one man said the army should be given time to investigate what happened, and that governing the country is a role to which the army is unsuited.
(SOUNDBITE)(Arabic) EGYPTIAN MAN, NASSER FAWZI TAHRAN:
"There is no alternative, but the situation requires a little bit of patience. The army is studying what happened. The army is not sure what to do. Right now we have drafted the army into service and put it in an unenviable position, where they have to guard everything. Is the army supposed to be supervising the entire Egyptian people? What happened to their original purpose, which is to defend us?"
Christians make up some 10 percent of Egypt's roughly 80 million people, and complain of endemic discrimination.
Nick Rowlands, Reuters.
