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Shia mosque attacked in Saudi Arabia At least four killed, 18 wounded in Saudi Arabia mosque attack
(about 3 hours later)
At least two people have died after two gunmen wearing suicide bomb belts attacked a Shia mosque during Friday prayers in eastern Saudi Arabia. A suicide bomb and gun attack on Shia worshippers has killed at least four people in eastern Saudi Arabia, the interior ministry said, extending a spate of attacks on the kingdom’s Shia minority.
One attacker detonated his explosives while the other opened fire, the interior ministry said. The other attacker was prevented from blowing himself up, it said. The assault on the Imam Rida mosque in the Eastern Province town of Mahasen, a mixed Sunni-Shia district, wounded at least 18 people.
The attack happened at the Imam Rida mosque in Mahasen, an area popular with Shia workers at the state-run Saudi Arabian Oil, the world’s largest oil-producing firm. There was no claim of responsibility, but it resembled previous attacks by Sunni militants from Islamic State on Shias it considers to be heretics. The oil-producing Eastern Province is home to Saudi Arabia’s Shia community.
The interior ministry said the attack killed two and injured seven, though security officials told the Associated Press that three were killed. The attack came less than a month after Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, most of them al-Qaida militants convicted of terrorist attacks as well as the Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
Mohammed al-Nimr, the brother of the executed cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, witnessed the attack and told AP that security forces and ambulances quickly surrounded the mosque. He said he thought the death toll would rise. The interior ministry said security forces prevented two suicide bombers from entering the mosque, where one blew himself up, killing four people. Security forces exchanged fire with the second gunman and arrested him.
Videos and photos circulated on social media showed at least three people lying apparently motionless inside the mosque. Separate video footage showed police firing in the air trying to disperse a crowd as they held one suspect in custody. Witnesses said one suicide bomber blew himself up outside the mosque, causing a power blackout inside. They said worshippers overpowered a second attacker after he opened fire in the mosque where 200 people were performing Friday prayers.
Shias make up 10-15% of the Sunni-ruled kingdom’s population. The minority group, many of whom live in the country’s oil-producing east, have previously been targeted in attacks by Islamic State, which views Shias as heretics. “The explosion happened outside the mosque, at the courtyard of the mosque, while another one entered with a machine gun. There are martyrs and wounded,” one witness said in an audio message circulated on social media.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack. “The young men grabbed his machine gun and beat him up, but he did not die. The police then came and took him away and the wounded were taken in private cars because ambulance cars did not arrive quickly.”
Another witness, speaking to Reuters by telephone, said a third attacker was believed to be involved in the attack and that he may have fled.
A video recording provided by activists showed a crowd surrounding a man prone on the floor, turning him over and unfastening what they said was a suicide belt around his waist.
Saudi Arabia has suffered a string of deadly gun and bomb attacks in recent months, many of them claimed by Islamic State.
Islamic State is bitterly hostile to Gulf Arab monarchies and is seen to be trying to stoke Sunni-Shia sectarian confrontation within Arabian peninsula states to destabilise and ultimately overthrow their dynasties.