25 people were killed and 60 injured on Sunday when an explosion rocked a Coptic church in Egypt’s Nile Delta, state television reported, the latest assault on a religious minority that has increasingly been targeted by Islamist militants.

The bombing in Tanta, a Nile Delta city less than 100 kilometres outside Cairo, comes as Islamic State’s branch in Egypt appears to be stepping up attacks on Christians and threatening them in messages blasted out to followers.

In February, Christian families and students fled Egypt’s North Sinai province in droves after Islamic State began a spate of targeted killings there.

These killings show that the scourge of Islamist extremism needs to be tackled head on and there are those who speak about ‘engagement’ with Islamist extremists as a way to reducing their impacts and attacks. This is naivety at best and appeasement at worst.

Islamist extremists have shown time and time again, that they want to push out the Copts, a community that has been part of the history of the country and attempts to do so, are not only perverse, they must be resisted at every stage.

Islamist extremists need to be tackled head on by the State, but the reality is that the State is weak and unable to break up these networks. The future for the Copts is extremely precarious. We simply cannot allow them to be pushed out of their own country.