Muslim Egyptians attack Christian property

Police have arrested 20 people after hundreds of Muslim Egyptians attacked Coptic Christian property after a woman who converted to Islam went missing, a security official said on Saturday.

Five people were also slightly hurt when police used tear gas to disperse protesters in the village of Al-Nazla, in the province of Fayyum 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Cairo, the official said.

The woman whose reported disappearance caused the disturbances later returned home with her 10-month-old baby after a three-day visit to relatives in the capital, security officials said.

Muslim villagers went on the rampage after word that the Coptic woman recently converted to Islam had gone missing from her home, and amid rumors that she had been abducted by her Christian family.

"Al-Nazla residents threw stones at houses and shops owned by Copts... because the villagers believed that the woman had been kidnapped by Christian members of her family," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Police fired tear gas grenades to disperse the protesters and arrested 20 people in connection with damage to Christian-owned property, the official said, adding that five people were slightly hurt in the unrest.

Earlier this month the Coptic Ecclesiastical Council issued an unusually strong-worded statement urging President Hosni Mubarak to guarantee the safety of Christians in Egypt.

The statement referred to a violent attack in May on a monastery in which four Copts were injured and called on Mubarak to prevent "more armed attacks on monks" and "insults to the cross."

Last month's attack in the southern town of Mallawi sparked fears of sectarian strife in an increasingly religious, Sunni Muslim-dominated society in which tensions with Christians are already running high.

Egypt's Copts -- the largest Christian community in the Middle East -- account for an estimated six to 10 percent of the country's 76 million inhabitants and complain of systematic discrimination and harassment.