Seething anger was mixed with calls for calm in Cairo yesterday at the funeral of a Coptic Christian gunned down a day earlier in an attack said to have been carried out by an off-duty policeman.

Some 300 people attended the funeral of Fathi Said Ebeid. He was shot dead after policeman Amer Ashur Abdelzaher boarded a train near the southern town of Samalut and is claimed to have opened fire, also wounding Mr Ebeid’s wife and four other Copts. Mr Abdelzaher was arrested after the shooting.

The shooting came 10 days after a suicide bomber killed 21 people outside an Alexandria church, further inflaming religious tensions.

Mr Ebeid’s family and friends gathered at the Mario Hanna church in central Cairo amid a significant police presence.

“What more do you want? We are being eliminated one by one,” shouted Mr Ebeid’s sister Yvonne, in tears.

“Some people want to get rid of the Copts,” she said, reflecting a growing sentiment among Egypt’s minority Christian population since the Alexandria church attack.