Egypt's interior ministry announced on Saturday in an official statement that it killed two other members of the cell involved in the attack that killed seven Coptic Christians south of Cairo in early November.

This comes as a continuation of the ministry's efforts to pursue those responsible for the attack, the statement said. 

On 3 November, the ministry announced that it had killed 19 gunmen involved in a 2 November ambush where gunmen opened fire on two buses carrying Christians near the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor in Minya, some 260 km south of Cairo, killing seven and wounding 18 others. Six of those killed were of the same family.

Security forces tracked the terrorists to a hideout in a mountainous region west of Upper Egypt's Assiut governorate, near the area of Dashlout/Farafra, the ministry said.

The ministry published photos of bloodied bodies with their faces concealed and assault rifles and shotguns lying beside them.

The area was raided in coordination with the armed forces, and two terrorists were killed in the attack.

Security forces found on site three automatic rifles, a large quantity of different caliber bullets, and living subsidies.

The forces also seized a vehicle that belonged to the terrorists and a mobile phone that belonged to one of the deceased in the attack, Kamal Youssef Shehata.

The legal proceedings have begun and the Supreme State Security Prosecution is investigating the incident. 

The attack on Copts was the latest in a series of assaults targeting the country's Christian minority, and was claimed by the Islamic State group, according to the group’s Amaq news agency.

The group was also behind another attack that killed 28 people in almost the same spot in May 2017.

Christians make up around 10 percent of Egypt's 97 million predominantly Muslim population.