In this Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012 photograph, Egyptian Christian Sameeha Wehba, 70, the only Christian who remains at Dahshour village, is hosted by Muslim family of Mahmoud Abou Abdel Karim, at Dahshour village, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Cairo, Egypt, a day after a sectarian violence erupted in the village following the death of a Muslim man, prompting most the local Christians to flee, church and security officials said. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

DAHSHOUR, Egypt (AP) — When the angry mob was rampaging through town, storming her home and those of other Christians, the 70-year-old woman hid in her cow pen, pushing a rock against the door. There she cowered for hours, at one point passing out from tear gas being fired by police that seeped in.

When Sameeha Wehba emerged just before dawn, she found she was the only Christian left in this small Egyptian village just south of Cairo.

Dahshour's entire Christian community — as many as 100 families some estimate — fled to nearby towns in the violence earlier this week. The flock's priest, cloaked in a white sheet to hide him, was taken out in a police van. At least 16 homes and properties of Christians were pillaged and some torched and a church damaged.

The violence was ultimately rooted in a dispute over a badly ironed shirt that escalated into a fight in which a Christian burned a Muslim to death, in turn sparking the rampage by angry Muslims.

"It was a devil's moment," Wehba said Thursday at the home of her Muslim neighbors, who have taken her in. "Whoever caused this was the devil's son."

The unprecedented exodus underscores how sectarian divisions that festered under decades of Hosni Mubarak's rule are taking a turn to the worse, complicated by the problems of post-revolution Egypt, a country where 10 percent of the population are Christian.

Police forces have been weakened and often don't carry out their duties. Islamists have been emboldened, with rhetoric fanning hatreds. In an atmosphere of lawlessness, Muslims and Christians alike feel freer in unleashing prejudices that in the past were kept barely under the surface.

Most notably in Dahshour, police did nothing as tensions spiraled following the burning of the Muslim man late last month.

While the man clung to life for several days, Muslim residents openly threatened to retaliate against all Christians. When the Muslim died Tuesday, the only solution from police was to encourage or assist in removing the Christian population before the violence erupted that night, Christians say. During the rampage, security forces acted to stop the crowd from storming the church, firing tear gas.

"What is grave this time is that violence was not only expected but preventable, and security forces failed to prevent it even though they had prior knowledge," said Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which monitors sectarian violence.

In the past, incidents of sectarian violence in Egyptian towns often took a routine course. A local spat between a Muslim and Christian would escalate, and if a death occurred, violence would be sparked. Police would often see a bit of unrest as a way to let off steam but then negotiate a compromise solution over the death. Officials would deny any sectarian nature to the conflict.

In recent years, there have been cases where a whole Christian family was ordered by authorities to leave their hometown to prevent retaliation. At the same time, Christians have become more ready to use violence as a preventive measure when they fear they will be attacked, Bahgat said.

But uniquely in Dahshour, angry Muslims treated the entire Christian community as the family of the accused killer and subject to retaliation.

"Collective retribution is the most dangerous and most likely (form of violence) to spread over time ... beyond the site of violence," Bahgat said.

Egypt's new president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, didn't comment on the violence for several days. On Friday, he appealed to Dahshour's Christians to return home, promising justice against perpetrators of the violence. But, echoing the line that Mubarak's government always took for Muslim-Christian violence, he denied the incident was sectarian.

"This was an individual incident and its origin is not about Muslims and Christians, and it happens every day. It was blown out of proportion," he said. Morsi's spokesman denied the eviction was forced.

The village of 15,000 is tucked between several of Egypt's most stunning ancient pyramids and surrounded by picturesque palm groves. Security trucks are now deployed on its winding, unpaved narrow roads to guard the church and empty Christian properties.

Many in the village say the Christians should not be allowed to return until the Christian laundry worker who set fire to the Muslim is killed. Some residents take an even harder line and say they shouldn't be let back at all.