Over 3,000 Christians clashed with riot police in a protest over church construction in which one person has been killed with dozens wounded, witnesses and security sources said.

The Interior Ministry has said that at least 112 protesters were detained after the scuffles where the authorities had halted construction of a church although the Orthodox Coptic Christians said they had an official permit.

"We will build it, we will build it," chanted some of the protesters near the unfinished church.

Christian protests on this scale are rare in Muslim-majority Egypt. But sectarian tensions have risen. According to Analysts, government is required to address grievances such as those over laws making it easier to build a mosque than a church to prevent church growth.

Some Christians, who make up 10 percent of Egypt's 79 million people, demonstrated near the church and others near the governor's office in the Giza area of the Northern African nation Egypt’s capital Cairo. The official state news agency estimated that as many as 3,000 people were involved in the protest.

A medical source said one Christian was killed. Security and medical sources said some 45 police and protesters were wounded.

Scores of police with shields and batons sealed off the area and fired tear gas at protesters. Some police threw rocks back.

"Look, this is our government throwing rocks at us. All this because of a church," said 30-year-old Samuel Ibrahim, pointing to officers lobbing stones towards the demonstrators.

Stones were strewn across roads blocked to traffic.

Giza governor Sayyed Abdel-Aziz said the Christians appeared to have used a permit for a social centre to build a church. "When we noticed indications that it was turning into a church, we told the church authorities to halt construction because a church would require a different licence," he said.

"I am completely willing to help Christian leaders get the permit for a church, but they have to stop turning it into a church without authorisation," he told the state news agency.

The Christians said they had the right permit and would continue to build, even without machinery.

"They wouldn't allow heavy equipment through, so the Christians brought in small cement-mixers," said George Helmy, 55, who lives near the site of the three-storey domed structure.

Egypt's Christian and Muslim clerics emphasise sectarian harmony, but communal tensions sometimes erupt into violence, often sparked by land disputes or cross-faith relationships.

A human rights group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, reported in April that the number of violent sectarian incidents had risen to 53 in 2009 from 24 in 2008, saying many cases had been insufficiently investigated or ignored.