The murder of a Coptic Christian priest in the Upper Egyptian city of Assiut angered the roughly 3000 Copts who turned out for his funeral on Wednesday to demand that the killers be punished.
According to the slain priest's neighbors, four people had killed the Coptic cleric in his home while "chanting Islamic slogans."
Copts clashed with a number of local Muslim shopkeepers as they marched in the funeral procession. Coptic marchers also smashed the windshield of a police car that attempted to bar their way.
They delivered the body of Father Dawood Ghobrial, who had been a pastor at Assiut's Bishop Taudros Monastery, to the Assiut University Hospital morgue.
Many funeral-goers, refusing to disperse, spent the night outside the hospital building.
