Muslim groups attack Egyptian Copts over church honoring Christians killed by ISIS – VIDEO: Heavy fighting resumes …

Coptic Christians pray at a symbolic funeral for the 21 Egyptian Christians who were beheaded in Libya by Islamic State last month. (Reuters)

Relatives of the Coptic Christians beheaded last month by jihadists in Libya their deaths immortalized in a gory video set against the backdrop of a Mediterranean beach are facing new extremist-Muslim violence as they seek to build a church to honor their murdered loved ones.

An angry mob in the Upper Egyptian village of Al Our the proposed site of the church because it was home to 13 of the 21 Christians murdered in the mass beachfront decapitation descended on the communitys current church after the midday Islamic prayer Friday and chanted that theyd never allow construction of the new place of worship to begin, witnesses told Egyptian activists in the U.S.

- Mina Abdelmalak, Coptic Christian

Things turned far uglier after nightfall, the witnesses said, as a smaller number of individuals threw Molotov cocktails and stones at the church, injuring several people, and setting cars ablaze, including one that belonged to a relative of one of the victims of the Libyan massacre.

The police came, but after the attack, said Mina Abdelmalak, a Coptic Christian living in Washington who is in close contact with the witnesses to the events in Al Our. There were already cars on fire. People had been bloodied. Stones and bricks had been thrown.

Some protesters also appeared at the family home of massacre victim Samuel Alham Wilson, but, in a gesture that provided some hope, were chased off by Muslim neighbors when the protesters started throwing stones.

Copts are the native Christians of Egypt, accounting for about 10 percent of the countrys 88 million people.

While they have traditionally faced varying levels of persecution in the mainly Muslim country, the Copts of Al Our -- a village on the Nile about 125 miles south of Cairo -- have additionally been in deep mourning since the Islamic State released its video Feb. 15 showing the beheading of the Christians -- 20 of them Copts, the other from Ghana.

The 13 from Al Our like their fellow Christians with whom they died had gone to Libya to seek work because their poverty-stricken home communities offered none or little that was viable.

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Muslim groups attack Egyptian Copts over church honoring Christians killed by ISIS - VIDEO: Heavy fighting resumes ...