The shocking footage shows a Muslim mob storming the church in the southern Egyptian city of Sohag, smashing furniture and walls and torching cars as they go.

Finally a man scrambles up to the top of an archway and batters a cross down into the courtyard below.

More gang members then surround the fallen cross and pulverise it with sticks.

The six-minute video, obtained by MidEast Christian news, was shot on August 14.

On the same day in Cairo, pro-Morsi street camps erupted into protest and security forces shot dead more than 600 people, sparking yet more violence and bloodshed across Egypt.

The news site claims that the crowd - apparently made up of men and some children - had become enraged by the eviction of pro-Morsi supporters from the Cairo camps.


The video below begins from a vantage point outside the church walls.

Subtitles explain that the attackers entered the church and chanted 'We sacrifice our souls and blood to save Islam'.

The view then moves inside the church, where, according to subtitles, 'One of the attackers ordered his partner to break the cross.'

Amid billowing black smoke, one man helps another to climb to the cross at the top of an arch.

'They chant "God is great" as the cross is broken,' read the subtitles, as the man tears the cross down and throws it to the crowd below.

Coptic Christians say dozens of their churches have been attacked by members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood following the ousting of Morsi on July 3.

Critics say the former president was aiming to turn Egypt into an Islamist state.

Christians make up about ten percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million, but Morsi supporters have blamed them for his downfall, according to Coptic leaders.

Bishop Makarios, a Coptic leader from Minya, accused Muslim Brotherhood leaders of planning attacks on Christian churches, homes and businesses in an effort to further divide the nation.

We were expecting this scenario weeks before sit-ins were broken up, as it was evident of the incitement being made by Brotherhood leaders against Copts,' Makarious told MidEast Christian News.

'We were then surprised by the systematic attacks on churches and Copts’ properties, many of them occurring at the same time in different places, in a series of attacks made under a plan they called "Plan B", which targeted all churches to be burned and destroyed.'

The provisional military government has pledged to rebuild Christian churches destroyed by mobs