Cairo, Egypt - A primitive bomb exploded near a Coptic church in Cairo late on Sunday night but there were no injuries, the Egyptian Interior Ministry confirmed on Monday. The ministry said two cars near the St. Mary church in the Cairo neighbourhood of Zaitun were damaged in the explosion.
Police said they had defused a second bomb that had been rigged to be detonated remotely. Police cordoned off the area and were investigating the incident, the Interior Ministry said.
Crowds have thronged to the church yearly for decades in the hope of seeing an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Visitors said she had appeared there several times in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
According to government figures, Christians comprise about 10 per cent of Egypt's approximately 80 million people. The rest are mostly Sunni Muslims.
Tensions periodically flare up over perceived slights to each other's religion or land disputes.
In April, four Muslim gunmen opened fire on a group of Coptic Christians, killing two and wounding one, as they were leaving church in the southern Egyptian governorate of Minya.
The incident took place on Saturday night as Coptic Christians were celebrating Easter in a church vigil.
At the time, a source in Egypt's security services told the German Press Agency