Egypt court hands death sentence to Copt killer

Riot police stand guard during clashes outside a morgue in the southern Egyptian town of Qena, southern Egypt, on January 7, 2010, where the bodies of the six Coptic Christians killed the previous day outside a church after a Christmas mass were being kept kept. A court on Sunday condemned a man to death for the January 2010 killings.

AFP - A court in southern Egypt on Sunday condemned a man to death for the January 2010 killing of six Coptic Christians outside a church after a Christmas mass.

A Muslim policeman was also killed when three gunmen in a car raked worshippers emerging from mass with bullets in the village of Nagaa Hammadi, near Qena, targeting the Copts who mark Christmas on January 7.

The court said it would announce verdicts against two other suspects on Thursday. All three pleaded innocent to charges of carrying out the January 6, 2010 attack during their trial.

Threatening to exacerbate tensions between Muslims and Egypt's minority Christians, a suicide bomber killed 21 people outside a church in the northern city of Alexandria after a New Year's Eve mass at the start of 2011.