Abstract: We propose an entanglement purification scheme based on material qubits  and ancillary coherent multiphoton states. We consider a typical QED  scenario where material qubits implemented by two-level atoms fly  sequentially through a cavity and interact resonantly with a single-mode  of the radiation field. We explore the theoretical possibilities of  realizing a high-fidelity two-qubit quantum operation necessary for the  purification protocol with the help of a postselective balanced homodyne  photodetection. We demonstrate that the obtained probabilistic quantum  operation can be used as a bilateral operation in the proposed  purification scheme. It is shown that the probabilistic nature of this  quantum operation is counterbalanced in the last step of the scheme  where qubits are not discarded after inadequate qubit measurements. As  this protocol requires present-day experimental setups and generates  high fidelity entangled pairs with high repetition rates, it may offer  interesting perspectives for applications in quantum information theory.