Seventeen people have been arrested in Egypt following a bombing at a Coptic Christian church that killed 21 worshippers attending a midnight mass on New Year’s Day. The bombing has been described as the worst sectarian violence in Egypt in a decade.

Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar University: “It is necessary that all Egyptians — and I do not want to say Muslims or Christians, but just 'Egyptians' — are needed today, more than at any time in the past, to join their hands together and, as has happened previously, embrace the crescent and the cross, to stand against such conspiracies that have targeted Christians today, but which tomorrow will not differentiate between Muslim and Coptic.”