Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi visited the Sinai peninsula yesterday to meet with and reassure Coptic families who fled from the town of Rafah after receiving death threats, his Facebook page said.

This “will not happen again,” Morsi told a group of local Bedouin tribal chiefs and other residents of the town of El-Arish, including Coptic Christian families, the official news agency Mena and participants said.

“Your security is our security,” he said.

“What happened is an individual case which represents neither Egypt nor its children, Muslim or Christian. It’s a crime for which the perpetrators must be held responsible,” Mena quoted Morsi as saying.

According to residents and officials in Rafah, on the border with Gaza, Christian families fled to El-Arish about 30 kilometres away after having received death threats from Islamists.

Leaflets were circulated in Rafah demanding that the Coptic community leave or be killed. A shop owned by a Coptic family was sub-sequently machine-gunned.

Egypt’s Christians make up six to 10 per cent of the country’s population of 82 million. (AFP)