Christian father and son killed in ISIS hotbed in Egypt

In this March 7, 2016, file photo, soldiers from the Philippine Marines capture a camp believed held by the local terror ISIS-inspired clan, the Maute Group, in Lanao del Sur JEOFFREY MAITEM / INQUIRER MINDANAO

CAIRO, Egypt — Two Coptic Christians, a father and his son, were found murdered Wednesday in Egypt’s North Sinai, a stronghold of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadist group, police and medics said.

They said the son was found having apparently been burnt alive while the father, a man in his 60s, had been riddled with bullets.

Their bodies were discovered at dawn behind a school in the provincial capital of El-Arish.

ISIS, which has mostly targeted Egypt’s security forces since the army overthrew Egypt’s Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, warned on Sunday it would set its sights on the country’s Christian minority.

On December 11, the jihadists claimed a suicide bombing during a service in a Coptic church in Cairo killing 29 people.

Masked assailants on a motorbike on February 12 gunned down a Coptic vet at the wheel of his car also in El-Arish, where gunmen killed a 35-year Christian civil servant at the end of January. CBB