Christians in the Middle East are the victims of "religious cleansing", President Nicolas Sarkozy of France warned following a string of attacks on churches in the region.

Mr Sarkozy made the statement while giving his annual address to religious leaders, The Telegraph reported.

"We cannot accept and thereby facilitate what looks more and more like a particularly perverse program of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing," said the French president.

An attack on a Coptic church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on January 1 killed 21 people. While noon has claimed responsibility, it followed online threats against Copts from an al-Qaeda-linked group which had said it was behind an attack on a church in Baghdad in October 2010.

Some 68 people died in the attack on a Syriac Catholic church, one of a number of strikes against Christians in Iraq.

"The Muslim community in France is horrified by these crimes committed in the name of Islam," he said. "Fundamentalist terrorism also kills Muslims."