مروة

A man who stabbed a pregnant Egyptian woman to death in Germany should be punished to the utmost extent of the law, Egypt's top cleric said on Monday as the woman was buried in her hometown.

"The man who killed Marwa Sherbini, the Egyptian citizen in Germany, and wounded her husband Elwi Ali Okaz should receive the maximum punishment," Grand Imam Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi told the official MENA agency.

"The killer is a terrorist who should receive severe punishment for what he has done, something that contradicts all the values of humanity, decency and religion," he said.

Sherbini, 32, was killed in a court in the northern German city of Dresden on Wednesday shortly before she was to give evidence in an appeal lodged by her attacker.

The 28-year-old attacker, identified only as Axel W. had been convicted and fined after calling her a "terrorist" for wearing the Islamic headscarf.

According to the Egyptian press, Sherbini was three months pregnant when she was killed. She was laid to rest in her hometown of Alexandria in northern Egypt on Monday.

Her husband, a researcher in genetic engineering who was reportedly shot by German police while trying to save his wife, is still in critical condition in hospital having also been stabbed by the assailant.

Tantawi told MENA he hoped the killing of Sherbini, whom he described as a "martyr," would not negatively affect the dialogue between the West and Islam because it was "an isolated event."