Update | Suicide bombers hit three Saudi cities in fourth terror attack in less than a week; four dead
Terrorists assault Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in blitz at the end of holy fasting month of Ramadan; no immediate reports on casualties
Suicide bombers struck three cities across Saudi Arabia on Monday, in an apparently coordinated campaign of attacks as Saudis prepared to break their fast on the penultimate day of the holy month of Ramadan.
Four Saudi security personnel were killed and five others were wounded in a suicide bombing outside one of Islam’s holiest sites, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, the interior ministry said.
“Security forces suspected a man who was heading towards Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (the Prophet’s Mosque) as he passed through a visitors parking lot. As they tried to stop him, he blew himself up with an explosive belt causing his death, and the death of four security personnel,” said the statement, adding that five others were injured.
The explosions targeting US diplomats, Shi’ite worshippers and a security headquarters at a mosque in the holy city of Medina follow days of mass killings claimed by the Islamic State group, in Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq. The attacks all seem to have been timed to coincide with the approach of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that celebrates the end of the fast.
Saudi Arabia, aside from being home to the holiest shrines of Islam, is also the world’s leading exporter of oil and the government is a major US ally.
A Saudi security official said an attacker parked a car near the US consulate in Jeddah before detonating the device. The official said the government was checking the reports of blasts in Qatif and Medina.
In the only one of the three attacks that appeared to have caused many casualties, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb near the security headquarters of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, the second-holiest site in Islam.