Scores of people were injured in Cairo on Thursday when residents clashed with thousands of Christians marching through the capital to demand an end to what they see as discrimination by the state.
Assailants threw stones and bottles and 25 people were lightly injured in subsequent clashes, a security official said, according to AFP.
The Coptic Christians were marching from Cairo’s northern Shoubra suburb towards the landmark Tahrir Square in the city center.
“But the locals in the neighborhood of Bulak attacked the group on their way to the square and threw stones at them,” another security source told Reuters.
Egypt has suffered a series of bloody sectarian clashes in which more than 40 people have been killed and thousands injured since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in February in a popular uprising.
Christians have long complained of barriers to the construction of churches, court verdicts that favor Muslims and what they see as the growing influence of Islamists who were suppressed during Mubarak's 30-year rule.
Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people.
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