Easter is traditionally the biggest weekend of the year for DIY, and both groups are offering steep discounts to tempt homeowners to embark on some major redecoration.The CEBR predicts spending on DIY could reach £1.07bn, which equates to £44 for every household in the country. Stuart Rose, the chief executive of Marks & Spencer, estimated that the group's sales jump 1 per cent on an underlying basis over the four-day holiday.Among those most desperate for a pick-up in trading are the do-it-yourself chains, including Kingfisher's B&Q and GUS's Homebase. "We expect to see a further pick-up in retail sales and the Easter weekend and the beginning of spring should unlock a backlog of spending that has been suppressed because winter has been so cold," Douglas McWilliams, the chief executive of the CEBR, said.For retailers, Easter is second only to Christmas in terms of boosting sales. Retailers are hopeful that the Easter weekend will lure back shoppers who have been on strike since Christmas, with consumers tipped to spend a record £10.5bn over the four-day break. Spending this Easter is expected to rise 2 per cent on last year, the Centre for Economics and Business Research predicted based on its analysis of consumer trends. Retail sales have been edging up after a post-Christmas lull, according to official data, although the timing of Easter, which fell at the end of March last year, has skewed some of the recent surveys.The British Retail Consortium said last week UK retail sales slipped 1.4 per cent in March, the first fall in five months, because of the later Easter. Egypt's last sectarian clashes were in Alexandria last October, when Muslims attacked churches and shops over the distribution of a DVD of a play deemed offensive to their religion..

Father Augustinos, who heads the Mar Girgis church, said: "We are trying to calm the situation after many of our youth started protesting. It doesn't do any good for the country to make protests." Abdullah Osman, an official with the ruling National Democratic Party, told the Associated Press: "They went to the churches to explain that the attackers are insane and that the people should not blow things [out of proportion]." Coptic Christians account for about 10 per cent of Egypt's population of 72 million. Hundreds of angry Copts gathered in front of the churches to protest against the attacks, and witnesses said clashes erupted between Christians and Muslims in the Sidi Bishr suburb, near Saints church. One was said to have attacked two churches; one attacked a third church; and the other was arrested during a foiled attack on a fourth church. Alexandria police earlier said they had arrested three men in the attacks. "While he was trying to enter into another church, he was arrested by police." The statement said one of the worshippers died from his wounds. The semi-official Middle East News Agency identified the victim as Nushi Atta Girgis, 78.

"This morning a citizen attacked three worshippers inside the Mar Girgis church in al-Hadhra with a knife and then fled and went into the Saints church, where he attacked three other worshippers and again fled," the ministry statement said. However, the government has always tried to downplay incidents that can be perceived as sectarian in nature so as not to inflame tensions between the Coptic minority and Muslim majority. The discrepancies between the reports could not be immediately explained. A knife-wielding assailant attacked worshippers at Coptic churches in the Egyptian city of Alexandria during Mass yesterday, killing one person and wounding at least five before he was arrested. The Egyptian Interior Ministry identified the attacker as Mahmoud Salah-Eddin Abdel-Raziq and said he suffered from "psychological disturbances". Earlier, police said three men had been arrested in four simultaneous church assaults, one of them foiled by police They said 17 people were wounded, and one later died.