Reuters
Jakarta, December 23: Christmas church services and other celebrations are being held this weekend under the gaze of armed guards and security cameras in many countries after Islamic State gunmen attacked a Methodist church in Pakistan as a Sunday service began.
Majority-Muslim countries in Asia and the Middle East were particularly nervous after US President Donald Trump’s recent announcement he intends to relocate the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a decision that has outraged many Muslims.
In Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country, police said they had stepped up security around churches and tourist sites, mindful of near-simultaneous attacks on churches there at Christmas in 2000 that killed about 20 people.
Muslim volunteers in Indonesia are also on standby to provide additional security if requested.
“If our brother and sisters who celebrate Christmas need … to maintain their security to worship, we will help,” said Yaqut Chiolil Qoumas, chairman of the youth wing of the Nahdlatul Ulema, one of the country’s biggest Muslim organisations.
In Cairo, where a bombing at the Egyptian capital’s largest Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people last December, the interior ministry said police would conduct regular searches of streets around churches ahead of the Coptic celebration of Christmas Jan 7.
An armoured vehicle of the Hungarian counter-terrorism unit TEK is seen at the entrance of the Christmas market in Budapest
Egypt’s Christian minority has been targeted in several attacks in recent years, including the bombing of two churches in the north of the country on Palm Sunday in April. At the Heliopolis Basilica, a Catholic cathedral in northeastern Cairo, security forces had set up metal detectors at the main doors and police vehicles were stationed outside ahead of masses Dec. 25, which marks Christmas Day for Catholic and Protestant Christians.
German police brought in experts and an explosives robot to investigate a suspicious package at a Christmas market in the city of Bonn late Friday.
Germany is on high alert a year after a failed Tunisian asylum seeker killed 12 people when he hijacked a truck and drove it into a Berlin Christmas market.
