An Egyptian court upheld jail terms on Monday for two Muslims for crimes including manslaughter in a case involving Muslim-Christian clashes that killed 20 Christians, court sources said.
The violence in December 1999 was the worst Christian-Muslim strife for decades in Egypt, where Christians -- mostly Copts -- make up about 10 percent of the 70 million population.
The sources said the Court of Cassation, Egypt's highest appeals court, reduced the jail term for one of the Muslim men to 13 years from 15 after a conviction for illegal assembly was overturned. Manslaughter and other convictions were upheld.
The court upheld the other man's 3-1/2 year sentence, which also included manslaughter, and upheld the acquittal of 93 others -- both Muslim and Christian.
Twenty Christians were killed, 33 people wounded and scores of shops destroyed in days of clashes in Kosheh about 400 km (250 miles) south of Cairo.
Clashes between the Muslim and Christian communities are a sporadic problem in southern Egypt, but in general the country's two communities live together amicably.
An initial trial over the Kosheh clashes in 2001 was condemned by the Christian minority when only four people were convicted. A retrial was ordered after appeal but at the retrial just two of the defendants were convicted in February 2003.