Gunmen on a motorbike have shot dead three people, including an eight-year-old girl, as they fired on a group outside a Coptic Christian church in Cairo, Egypt's interior ministry says.
The attack was the first such assault targeting Christians in the Egyptian capital since the military coup that ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on July 3.
It targeted a group of people who had emerged from the church in north Cairo's Al-Warak neighbourhood late on Sunday after attending a wedding, the ministry said.
It said an eight-year-old girl, a woman and a man were killed and nine others were wounded in the attack.
"There were two men on a motorbike and one of them opened fire," said the interior ministry.
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A health ministry official confirmed three people had been killed and 12 people had been wounded.
Ahmed al-Ansari from the health ministry told AFP that four of the 12 were in a critical condition.
Egyptian Christians, the majority of whom are Copts, have been targeted since the ouster of Morsi and in particular since an August 14 crackdown by security forces on two Cairo camps of Morsi's Islamist supporters.
Islamists were enraged by the deadly crackdown and they accuse Coptic Christians of backing the coup that toppled Morsi, who belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood and was Egypt's first democratically elected president.
Egypt's new army-installed government is engaged in a widespread crackdown on Islamists, jailing more than 2,000 since the pro-Morsi camps were stormed in August.
Morsi himself is in custody and is to go on trial on November 4 over deadly clashes between his supporters and opponents outside the presidential palace in December 2012.
