An Egyptian policeman shot dead a Christian man and wounded five others in a shooting spree on a train in south Egypt on Tuesday, Egypt's Interior Ministry confirmed.

The policeman opened fire to passengers randomly after he boarded a train in Samalut town station in Minya governorate, killing a 71-year-old Christian man and injured five others, including the dead man's wife.

In a statement of the Interior Ministry, the names of the other wounded suggested they were also Christians.

The shooter has been arrested in his Samalut-based home and is questioned by police, but his motive was not immediately clear.

A security source said that the Muslim policeman, whose name is Amer Ashour Abdel-Zaher, was going to his work in Beny Mazar in Minya Governorate. He shot people with his pistol and ran away. The train was on its way from Asyut to Cairo.

Shortly after the shooting, clashes erupted between hundreds of angry Coptic Christians and security forces outside the hospital where the injured were treated. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters.

The shooting incident comes two weeks after the suicide bombing outside a Coptic church in Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria in New Year's Eve, which killed 21 and injured nearly 100 others, the deadliest attack in the Islamic country in years.

The bombing caused demonstrations of Coptic Christians around the country protesting against government's failure to protect their community.

Coptic Christians account for about 10 percent of Egypt's total population of nearly 80 million.

Tensions between Muslims and Coptics have kept cropping up in Egypt for a number of reasons. Christians often complain about being discriminated against in the Muslim majority country, saying they are not given the same freedom for building churches as Muslims building mosques.

Last November, hundreds of Egyptian Coptic Christians clashed with police in Giza Governorate to protest the freeze of building a church, leaving one protester killed.

A few days before the November clash, Muslims set fire to some houses owned by the family of a Coptic man who was said to have had an affair with a Muslim girl in southern Egypt.

The Egyptian government has been calling for and striving to achieve unity between the Muslim majority and the Coptics in the country.

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