TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - At least four people was killed during a suicide bombing and gun attack on Shi'ite Muslim mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia on Friday, January 29, 2016, the Saudi interior ministry and witnesses said according to a report by Reuters. The report added that at least another 18 people were wounded in the attack.
No group is yet to claim responsibility over the attack. However, analysis indicated that the attack was similar to previous attacks by Sunni militants from Islamic State on Shi'ites, which the group considers to be heretics.
The attack came just less than a month after Sunni-ruled 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 Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
The Saudi interior ministry said that security forces prevented two suicide bombers from entering the mosque, where one blew himself up just outside the mosque, causing a blackout and killing four out of 200 people currently performing their Friday prayers. Security forces exchanged fire with the second man and arrested him.
"The explosion happened outside the mosque, at the courtyard of the mosque, while another one entered with a machinegun. There are martyrs and wounded," one witness said in an audio message circulated on social media.
Another witness, quoted by Reuters, said that a third attacker was believed to be involved in the attack and that he may have fled or disappeared.
MAHINDA ARKYASA
