Riyadh: A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia during Friday prayers, residents said, killing around 20 people and wounding more than 50, local residents and a hospital officials said.No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, the first to target Shiite Muslims in Saudi Arabia since November when gunmen killed at least eight people in an attack on a Shiite religious anniversary celebration, also in the east where most of the country’s minority Shiites live.
The attack could further harm relations between Sunnis and Shiites in the Gulf region, where tensions have risen during weeks of military operations in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition against Houthi fighters seen as proxies of regional Shiite power Iran.One witness described a huge explosion at the Imam Ali mosque in the village of al-Qadeeh where more than 150 people were praying. “We were doing the first part of the prayers when we heard the blast,” worshipper Kamal Jaafar Hassan over telephone from the scene.
A spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, calling the attack an act of terrorism, said the bomber detonated a suicide belt hidden under his clothes inside the mosque, causing a number of people to “martyred or wounded”. “Security authorities will spare no effort in the pursuit of all those involved in this terrorist crime,” the official said.
The IS militants have claimed responsibility for the attack.
