Cairo - A 60-year-old Christian man has been stabbed to death in an Egyptian village following a week of sectarian tension surrounding an illicit love affair, local Christian church sources reported on Friday.

Police in the province of Qalubiya, north of Cairo, arrested a 24- year-old Muslim man, Yasser Ahmed Qassem, on suspicion of stabbing to death the father of a Christian man believed to have been having an affair with Qassem's sister.

Qassem is believed to have stabbed the man after a fight in which the clothes of the elder man's son were set on fire.

The murder case comes after a week of tension in the mixed village of Domas, population 25,000, between the two communities over rumours of the Christian-Muslim affair.

Christians comprise about 10 per cent of Egypt's approximately 80 million people, with the rest being mainly Sunni Muslims.

Tensions periodically flare over perceived slights to each other's religion or land disputes. (dpa)