Egypt was on high alert on Monday ahead of the Coptic Christmas holiday following a New Year's Day church bombing that killed 21 people as investigators raced to identify those behind the attack.
Police cancelled leave for top officers and were tightening surveillance of airports and ports to prevent suspects from leaving the country, as new checkpoints were set up across the nation.
Security was also to be beefed up at churches for Christmas which Copts celebrate on 7 January.
The clampdown comes amid fears of new protests by Copts following overnight clashes at Cairo's St. Mark's Cathedral — headquarters of Coptic leader Pope Shenouda III — during which 45 policemen were wounded.
The protesters pelted with rocks a minister who had come to visit the pope and heckled other government officials while other demonstrators blocked off four main streets in Cairo before police dispersed them.
Coptic Christmas will fall on Friday — the weekly Muslim day of prayer and rest — and Shenouda said he intended to say mass as usual on Christmas Eve.
Twenty-one people were killed early on New Year's Day and 79 wounded when an apparent suicide bomber detonated his payload as hundreds of worshippers were leaving midnight at Al-Qiddissin (The Saints) church in Alexandria.
A security official said on Sunday that about 20 people were detained for questioning but there was no evidence any of them was directly connected to the attack.
State-run newspapers quoted security officials as saying that the bomb was a sophisticated device packed with TNT and pieces of metal to cause the largest number of casualties possible.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which came two months after an Al-Qaeda linked group which claimed responsibility for a deadly Baghdad church hostage-taking threatened Coptic Christians.
The group demanded the release of two women, Camelia Shehata and Wafa Constantine, both priests' wives, it said the church was holding against their will after they converted to Islam.
Egypt, the most populous Arab country, witnessed a resurgence in attacks by Islamist militants in the last decade after the government battled a spate of attacks in the 1990s that included an attempt abroad to kill the president.
President Hosni Mubarak has vowed to find those responsible for the bombing which he said targetted all Egyptians, regardless of their faith, and blamed "foreign hands."
The bombing has further underscored the vulnerability of the Copts, who make up about 10 percent of the country's 80-million population and complain of discrimination.
Last year began with a massacre of six Copts and a Muslim security guard after a Christmas Eve mass and ended on a tense note after two Coptic protesters died in clashes in a protest over a Cairo church permit.
Some Coptic activists have accused the government of not doing enough to prevent incitement against the minority, especially after Islamists began staging regular demonstrations demanding the release of Shehata.
Shehata, like Constantine in 2004, had escaped her husband last year and reportedly wanted a divorce, something that is very difficult to obtain from the Coptic church.
The church has denied that either of the women converted. Women's rights activists say Coptic women have been known to convert, either to Islam or another Christian denomination, to escape unhappy marriages.
