Egyptian authorities deployed some 1,000 police around a southern town on today to forestall any Muslim-Christian clashes after two Christian men were killed in a street brawl, security sources said.
The Christians were axed to death after a donkey being ridden by a Muslim man slipped on the wet roadway outside their house in the town of Salamoun, about 350 km (220 miles) south of Cairo, they said.
The donkey rider was later arrested and questioned. Witnesses in the town said there had been no further violence but the situation was tense.
Salamoun, a Nile valley town of about 40,000 people, is close to 40 per cent Coptic Christian but was also a stronghold of militant Islamists who fought the government in the 1990s.
Tensions between the Muslim and Christian communities are a sporadic problem in southern Egypt. The last major outbreak of violence was in 1999, when 20 Christians were killed and 33 people wounded in the southern village of Kosheh.