by Mahmoud Fouly
CAIRO, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Marco Ayed Habib, an Egyptian 14-year-old boy in the third grade of preparatory school, was carefree while riding his father's pickup car along with his younger brother Mina and several other workers, heading to visit a monastery on the desert highway in Upper Egypt's Minya province.
It never crossed his little, innocent mind that the trip will turn into a tragedy with his farther being one of about 30 victims who were gunned down by terrorists on Friday. Marco survived to become an eyewitness yet he couldn't help his tears while narrating the story.
"Two men stopped our car for a ride at the desert highway. Ahead of the monastery before we got off, they confronted us, asked my father for his ID card and before he gave it to them, they shot him with three bullets. I have seen it," the boy tearfully told Xinhua while rubbing his eyes.
Marco said that the terrorists all together were more than a dozen or maybe 15, disguised in military uniform, and they had video cameras to record the deadly attack on Friday on a bus and two cars heading to Saint Samuel Monastery in Maghagha.
After his farther was shot and the perpetrators were preparing to escape, the boy bravely sneaked into his father's vehicle and made a phone call to his uncle back in his village of Dayr Jarnous for help.
"Marco is the hero of the tragedy, as he is the only one who could go back to the car and call us for help," his uncle Mamdouh Youssef Michael told Xinhua near the altar of the Sacred Family Church of Dayr Jarnous, where a funeral for several victims was held.
Michael continued that they hurried to the scene and saw Ayed, Marco's father, was bleeding but still alive. They tried to move the man to the nearest hospital but the man breathed his last on the way.
"We carried him to rescue and an ambulance met us halfway, took him in and provided him with a respirator, but he died before we reached the hospital," said Marco's uncle.
He added that Marco was surrounded by over 30 dead bodies in a mountainous area, yet the little boy did not only call relatives for help but he also stopped a private car and asked them to take his 10-year-old younger brother Mina to a safe place at the highway.
During the funeral held on Friday evening at the Sacred Family Church of Dayr Jarnous village, hundreds of Copts and Muslims were marching together and shouting slogans of unity and prayers for the victims.
The angry Copts raised long wooden crosses during the funeral while carrying the coffins of the village's victims on their shoulders.
Terror attacks in Egypt have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the mid-2013 military removal of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.
Most of the attacks have been claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State (IS) militia, which started to expand terror operations to target the Coptic Christian minority to further pressure the government.
In April, IS-claimed bombings at two churches in Gharbiya and Alexandria northern provinces killed at least 47 and wounded over 120. A similar suicide bombing at a Cairo church in December 2016 killed at least 28 worshippers.
On Saturday, the IS also claimed responsibility for the anti-Coptic attack in Minya, which left victims from Minya, Beni Sweif and Giza provinces who all were heading to the monastery. Marco's father was one of them.
When Marco was asked what he would like to be in the future, he tearfully said nothing, but when he was asked about his message to the terrorists he said: "May God punish them!"
