Attack on Al-Ahsa mosque kills four

Saudi Gazette report A suicide bombing and gun attack on a mosque in the eastern region of Al-Ahsa on Friday killed four people, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. The assault on the Imam Rida mosque in Mahasen District, an area in which there is an extension of a compound where state oil company Aramco employees live, also wounded at least 18 people. There was no early claim of responsibility but it resembled previous attacks by Daesh (the so-called IS) militants. It came less than a month after Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, most of them Al-Qaeda militants convicted of attacks in the world’s biggest oil exporting state since 2003, as well as dissident cleric Nimr Al-Nimr. 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 man and arrested him. Witnesses said one suicide bomber blew himself up outside the mosque, causing a power blackout inside. They said worshipers overpowered a second attacker after he opened fire in the mosque where 200 people were performing Friday prayers. “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. “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 said a third attacker was believed to be involved in the attack and that he may have fled or disappeared. Saudi Arabia has suffered a string of deadly shooting and bomb attacks in recent months, many of them claimed by the Daesh. — with input from Agencies