Some 5,000 angry Muslims protestors rioted and clashed with police in the Mediterranean city on Friday demanding an apology from Coptic Pope Shenuda III over the release of a DVD deemed offensive to Islam.

The clashes left three people dead and at least 60 wounded.

More than 100 people have been placed in 15-day preventive detention for suspected involvement in the riots in Egypt's second city, a judiciary official said Sunday.

The play at issue was first performed in Alexandria's Saint Girgis church two years but the row erupted when a DVD was released, in the middle of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and only days before the legislative polls.

But far from apologising as demanded, Pope Shenuda III charged that Christians were being accused of unfounded rumours and warned against "any attempt to exploit the incident during the November elections".

Many Christians saw in the event an organised attempt to unleash anger against their community, which despite its size and economic weight is poorly represented in the country's political spheres.

Church authorities say the Copts account for 10 percent of Egypt's 72 million-strong population but the government says they make up just six percent.

"Why did these demonstrators suddenly appear now and in the Ghorbal (Alexandria) constituency where there is a large Coptic electorate?" asked Munir Fakhri Abdel Nur, a leading Christian politician and businessman.

Alexandria is home to a constituency contested by one of only two Copts out of 444 candidates fielded by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of President Hosni Mubarak.

With only seven MPs in the 454-seat parliament, most of whom were among the 10 appointed directly by the president, the Coptic community had expected larger representation in the NDP's list of candidates.

Despite chronic differences with the regime, Pope Shenuda II had given his church's whole-hearted support to the 77-year-old Mubarak during the campaign for last month's September presidential election in which he won a fifth term.

Yussef Sidhom, who heads Egypt's sole Coptic publication -- the weekly Al-Watani -- said candidate lists drawn up by the NDP ahead of the November poll "show that the party doesn't factor in the Copts in its political planning, regardless of what they or the Church do."

"Copts feel excluded from political life and this sentiment is heightened when the NDP selects only two to run in the elections, meaning they represent 0.4 percent," Coptic writer Samir Murqos also charged.

Over the years, small incidents have often erupted into full-fledged communal unrest, highlighting the unease of the Christian community in an increasingly Islamised Egypt.

A Christian's washing dripping on his Muslim neighbour's balcony in a district of Cairo sparked a wave of riots in the 1970s. A trade dispute over a piece of cloth sparked deadly riots in the small Upper Egypt village of Kosheh in 2000.

More recently, a Coptic woman who was refused a divorce by her church caused nationwide commotion when she threatened to convert to Islam.

Murqos explained that the fresh tension witnessed in recent days "is much more complicated than just a controversial play".

Recalling that a Muslim man tried to stab a nun outside the Saint Girgis church only last Wednesday, Murqos labelled the incident "extremely grave".