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CAIRO (Reuters) - Police used teargas and fired in the air to disperse Coptic Christians protesting a drive-by shooting on Thursday in front of a southern Egyptian church in which six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed.

The shooting took place in the town of Nagaa Hamady after midnight mass on Coptic Christmas, which is celebrated on January 7. Another nine Copts were wounded, the Ministry of Interior said.

Police clashed with more than 1,000 protesters in front of the church, witnesses said. Members of the crowd smashed the fronts of two shops owned by Muslims before police pushed the crowd into the church grounds.

An unidentified gunman opened fire on a number of Christians in commercial areas at 11:30 p.m. Cairo time (21:30 GMT) on Wednesday, killing two people, the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.

Accompanied by other men, he then went to the church, where he opened fire from inside a private car, killing the others.

According to a preliminary investigation, the gunman was an Egyptian known criminal named Mohamed Ahmed Hussein, the ministry said. The shooting was related to the alleged rape of a Muslim woman by a Christian man in the same city more than a month earlier, it added.

The priest of the church where the shooting took place told Reuters the shooting was sectarian, and he blamed Egyptian police for failing to prevent it.

"This accident is a result of hard feelings between Muslims and Christians over the last month after the rumour of a rape of a Muslim woman by a Christian man," Father Corolos of Nagaa Hamady church said.

"There should have been more security provided to churches on this particular day, when many Christians gather to celebrate the holiday," he added.