Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday the foiling of a fresh attack on a busy restaurant in the predominantly Shiite Eastern Province, Al Arabiya local news reported. Both guys weren’t Saudi citizens, al Arabiya said.
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An Interior Ministry statement released Wednesday says police questioned the man the day before and discovered he was carrying a bomb inside a sports bag.
The attempted attack occurred around sunset prayers, it added.
The ministry said police fired on the suspect, who died on the way to hospital.
Police found a Pakistani residency card on the man, the statement said.
Last June, four Shia Muslims were killed why trying to prevent a bomber from entering al-Anoud mosque in Dammam city in eastern Saudi Arabia and close to Qatif. The arrested men were identified as Abdullah al-Ghonaimy, a 27-year-old Saudi, and Hussein Mohammed, a 24-year-old Syrian. “They were trained by Daesh elements overseas to target, in a suicide operation, Al-Saif Restaurant and Cafe in Tarot” neighboring Qatif, the ministry said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (IS) group. “Investigations so far reveal that two other Syrians are involved and have been arrested”. Near Islam’s second holiest site, the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, four people died in another suicide blast.
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Saudi Arabia has suffered a string of deadly shooting and bomb attacks in recent months, many of them claimed by the militant Islamic State group. Authorities arrested 19 people, including 12 Pakistani nationals, after the July attacks.
