Nuns Traumatized after School Attack in Egypt

The following news is from our friends at Compass Direct.  Please pray for the nuns and the school involved in this horrific trauma.  Please also pray that those persecuting the church, would come to know the Lord Jesus and that they would see how much He loves them.

One hospitalized for breakdown after sword-wielding Muslims converge.

CAIRO, Egypt, March 16 (CDN) — Two nuns in Upper Egypt faced “unimaginable fear” – with one later hospitalized over the emotional trauma –when 1,500 Muslim villagers brandishing swords and knives trapped them inside a guesthouse last week and threatened to burn them out.


The next day, the assailants frightened children at the school; attendance has since dropped by more than a third.


Accusing the nuns of building a church at the site, the throng on March 4 chanted Islamic slogans as they surrounded the guesthouse of a privately run, public school in the village of Abu Al-Reesh, in Aswan Province. Two nuns, volunteer teachers at Notre Dame Language Schools, barricaded themselves into the school’s guesthouse for about eight hours.


The women were “terrified,” said Magdy Melad, director of the school.


“No matter what I say, I cannot give a picture of the fear and the worry they had,” Melad said.


School workers hid a third nun from the mob in a separate building on the campus out of fear that the mob would attack her as well. While two of the three nuns are Egyptian, one with a French name holds both Egyptian and French passports.


Conservative Muslims began milling around the school and accosting school employees at 2 p.m. on March 4. A group of men with swords stopped one employee and accused him of “building a church, and we are coming to attack the place,” the employee told Melad, who was at the scene of the attack.


“Huge numbers of people with swords, knives and daggers were gathering,” Melad said. “All that was in my head was that I was worried about the nuns. So I called and told them not to open the door and not to move until I came to get them.”


The Muslims tried to push their way into the building as the nuns kept calling for help. The door to the guesthouse is made of heavy reinforced metal, according to Melad, which prevented the building from being breached. Members of the mob ransacked the entire building, stealing security cameras, electrical equipment and a satellite dish on top of the guesthouse, among other items.


From three mosques near the school, people began shouting over loudspeakers in minarets, summoning more Muslims to surround the guesthouse.


“People of Abu Al-Reesh, get down [there] – the Christians are building a church and building a monastery,” the loudspeakers blared, according to Melad Kamel Garas, owner of the school. “The Christians took our ancestor’s land and are building a church.”

School workers tried to get the nuns out of the building, but the Muslims sent them away.
 

“When we tried to get them out, they refused to let them out, and they wanted to burn them alive in the guesthouse,” Garas said.


School employees called police, but initially only three officers showed up, according to Melad. The mob set upon them. Four more trucks arrived with reinforcements, but authorities were still unable to control the mob.

Full Story at Compass Direct