Saudis were rattled by the rare, high-profile attack.
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Four security officers were killed in Monday’s attacks that targeted USA diplomats, Shi’ite Muslim worshippers and a security headquarters at a mosque in the holy city of Medina.
Al Arabiya adds, “The attack near the Prophet’s Mosque took place during Maghreb prayers, the time when Muslims break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan”.
His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, in a phonecall, offered condolences to The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman on the terror attack on Monday across Saudi Arabia and reaffirmed the UAE’s support to the country.
Suicide bombings have killed about 290 people in Turkey, Bangladesh, Yemen, and Iraq during this Ramadan. The Saudi Interior Ministry said officers became suspicious of a man heading for the Prophet’s Mosque through a parking lot. The site in Medina is one of three mosques that both of the main branches of Islam accept.
“The Prophet Muhammad’s mosque was packed Monday evening with worshipers during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the kingdom on Tuesday”.
Saudi Arabia’s supreme council of clerics said the attacks “prove that those renegades. have violated everything that is sacred”. The other attacks on Monday targeted the U.S. consulate in the Red Sea city of Jeddah and the Shiite minority in the east of the Sunni-dominated kingdom.
He urged all Muslims to stand by the Saudi leadership in its fight against terrorism and defending Arab and Islamic causes.
Not only have Saudi Arabia’s regional allies also condemned the attack in Medina, but so have its foes, including Shiite-led Iran and the Lebanese militant Shiite group Hezbollah, as well as Afghanistan’s Taliban, which itself has carried out numerous attacks against civilians.
Middle East expert Madhawi Al-Rasheed said the attack in Medina appeared aimed at humiliating the Saudi government, the guardian of Islam’s holiest sites.
Saudi Twitter users were quick to blame so-called Islamic State for the Medina attack. The Saudi interior ministry said “the body parts of three people were found” at the site but had not yet been identified.
On Tuesday morning, the Senior Council of Ulema issued a statement saying those behind the three attacks, whom it described as “renegades”, “have no respect for any sanctity and they have no religion or conscience”.
Hours earlier, a suicide bomber was killed and two people were wounded in a blast near the United States Consulate in the coastal city of Jeddah. It said he lived in the port city with “his wife and her parents”.
The US embassy in Riyadh reported no casualties among consulate staff in the attack, which coincided with the US July 4 Independence Day holiday.
The attack, which also fueled publish anger toward the government and political leaders, prompted Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to order new security measures in Baghdad and other cities, including pulling a handheld electronic device widely sold as a bomb detector but which has been reputedly branded as bogus by experts.
The second attack took place near dusk outside a Shia mosque in the mainly Shia eastern city of Qatif.
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Saudi Arabia is part of the USA -led coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and extremists view the Saudi government to be enemies of Islam.
