Agence France-Presse
Riyadh, August 6: An explosion probably triggered by a suicide bomber ripped through a mosque used by Saudi police Thursday killing at least 17 people in the southern city of Abha, the interior ministry said. A spokesman for the ministry, in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, said nine other people were wounded, three of them in serious condition.
He identified three of those killed as “workers” in a mosque used by members of a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) domestic security unit in Abha, in the southern province of Asir. “The terrorist attack struck worshippers during prayer.
Ten policemen and three workers were killed while nine were wounded, three seriously,” the spokesman said. He said the attack was likely carried out by a suicide bomber, saying that “body parts found at the scene” indicated the use of explosive vests.
State television El-Ikhbariya, which broke the news earlier also gave a toll of 17. It was too early to say who may have carried out the attack, an interior ministry spokesman said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Thursday’s bombing was the most serious in recent months against Saudi security forces, who have been targeted in attacks blamed on the Islamic State (IS) group.
In mid-July, a car bomb exploded at a security checkpoint near a prison in the capital Riyadh. It killed the 19-year-old driver and wounded two policemen, the interior ministry said. In the southwestern city of Taif July 3, a policeman was gunned down during a raid in which three people were arrested and flags of the IS group found, police said earlier. On successive Fridays in May suicide bombings at mosques of the minority Shiite community in Eastern Province killed a total of 25 people.
An IS-affiliated group calling itself Najd Province — which takes its name from the region around Riyadh – claimed those attacks as well as another suicide bombing that killed 26 people at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait in June. The group considers Shiites to be heretics.
Explosion in Gaza Strip kills 4
Gaza: An explosion killed four Palestinians and wounded 30 Thursday in the southern Gaza town of Rafah along the Egyptian border, medical officials and local residents said. Media outlets of the Hamas Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip blamed the blast on an unexploded Israeli missile from last year’s war. The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said it was checking the cause of the explosion, which destroyed the home of Ayman Abu Nqeira, a Hamas member. He was wounded in the explosion and his son and three other relatives were killed, witnesses said.
