Cairo: January 14, 2011. (PCP) Copts gathering Thursday morning in the streets of the Zabbaleen suburb of Cairo to peacefully protest the fatal attacks upon Coptic Christians in recent days were surrounded by Egyptian police who fired live bullets and gas bombs into the crowd leaving many people injured. According to eyewitnesses, the state police were joined by Muslims from nearby homes who hurled stones at the protesting Copts. The majority of Zabbaleen residents are Copts. Copts took to the street in protest of the recent killings - first, the New Year's car bomb in Alexandria and then a few days later the killing of a Christian passenger and injury of others on a train on route to Cairo. An Egyptian off-duty police officer boarded the train, sought out Christians and opened fire. According to the Egyptian regime, the police officer is mentally unstable. This predictable response by authorities is one that has been heard consistently for the past thirty years in defense of anyone who kills or injures a Christian! The area of Zabbaleen is internationally known for the massacre of pigs by the Egyptian regime a few years ago when, against the advice of the world community, the regime used the swine flu epidemic as an excuse to kill (in some cases clubbing to death) more than 600,000 pigs owned by Copts. The regime was successful in wiping out the entire economy of the Copts in this area.