Three suicide bombings have struck across Saudi Arabia in a single day, including a shocking attack at Islam’s second holiest site, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, where four security guards were killed.
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Five others were wounded in the explosion, the Ministry said.
Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif has condemned the terror attacks on Saudi Arabia.
Religious and political leaders across the Middle East denounced the attack near the Prophet’s Mosque that left four dead and came as Muslims prepare for the feast this week marking the end of the holy month Ramadan. Local media say the attacker was intending to strike the mosque when it was crowded with thousands gathered for the sunset prayer.
Qari Ziyaad Patel, 36, from Johannesburg, South Africa, was at the mosque when he heard a blast just as people were breaking their fast with dates. Many at first thought it was the sound of traditional, celebratory cannon fire, he said.
“I actually felt the ground shake”, he said.
“The vibrations were very strong”, he told the AP news agency.
Millions of pilgrims who perform the Hajj every year go on to visit the mosque in Medina because of its connections to Muhammad.
Nasima al-Sada, another resident, told AFP that “one bomber blew himself up near the mosque”, frequented by Shiites in downtown Qatif on the Gulf coast.
With attacks or thwarted plots in Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in the past two weeks, the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) appears to be expanding its reach in the Arab world outside of Syria and Iraq, where it established its “Caliphate”.
He said the people and the government of Afghanistan had been victims of attacks by Takfiri terrorist groups for the past two decades and there was an urgent need to destroy this phenomenon.
“Terrorism knows no border or nationality and there is no solution except creating an worldwide and regional unity against this phenomenon”, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told state broadcaster IRIB. His brother, prominent Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, was executed in January after a court found him guilty of sedition and inciting violence for his role in anti-government protests – charges his supporters reject.
Two explosions shook the city of Qatif in eastern Saudi Arabia, where numerous kingdom’s Shi’ite Muslim minority live, and witnesses said body parts could be seen in the area of the blast.
The three Arabic countries attacked this month are majority Sunni and enjoy diplomatic ties with the United States, which President Obama has attempted to use to cooperate against the Islamic State.
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It was not yet confirmed by Pakistani officials that Khan was Pakistani national.
