Christian confessions which follow the eastern calendar celebrated Christmas on Tuesday at the seat of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate in the Dahiyeh neighborhood, east of Al-Arish, as well as at the headquarters of the St. George Church in the center of the city of Al-Arish and Bir al-Abd Church.
Christian families were keen to arrive early at the celebration passing through secured corridors and checkpoints.
North Sinai witnessed a wave of mass emigration of Coptic families in 2017, after a group of gunmen targeted Christian families and clerics, killing some of them, and asking the rest to leave.
The most infamous terrorist organization in Sinai is Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, which pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2014 and changed its name to Wilayat Sinai. A massive military operation was launched to pursue the organization on February 9, 2018, with the participation of members from the army and police forces.
Loutfi Shnouda, a music teacher, told Asharq Al-Awsat that Christians celebrated the holiday amid an atmosphere of joy, but he added: “The holiday would have been better with the presence of all the families who had left for their fear of being targeted by terrorist groups.”
In turn, Sheikh Mohsen Abu al-Qasim, Director General of North Sinai Al-Azhar region, said that a large number of Muslim clerics attended the celebration to congratulate the Christians on Christmas Day.
Major General Abdel-Fadil Shusha, Governor of North Sinai, expressed his wish that the upcoming Christmas celebration be attended by all the Christian families who had previously left the province.
He added that the army and security forces were achieving continuous field victories against terrorism, noting that a large percentage of families have returned to the land of Sinai.
