Six villagers and 10 police officers were wounded when angry Muslims attacked a church and Christian homes outside Cairo on Wednesday, Arab media reported.
The attack in Dahshur village took place after a Muslim man died Tuesday from wounds he sustained from a fight with a Christian, the Dubai-based Al Arabiya reported.
Police tried to prevent the angry Muslim crowd from setting fire to a church, but the crowd managed to torch several homes in the village, and clashed with the police force, DPA reported.
The editor-in-chief of Al Ahram newspaper, Amin Ahmad Amin, said the tension erupted Friday after a fight between the Muslim and the Christian, a laundry worker whom he accused of burning his shirt while ironing it.
Similar clashes between Muslims and the Copts have taken place in the past 18 moths in Cairo.
The Copts make up roughly 10 per cent of Egypt's 82-million-strong population. In January 2011, a suicide bomber killed more than 20 Christians outside a church in the country's second city Alexandria.