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Saudi Arabia rounds up 431 suspected Isis members

The interior ministry said the arrests foiled attacks on mosques, security forces and a diplomatic mission. Those attacks left more than 220 dead.

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The group also plotted to attack a diplomatic mission, ministry said without elaborating.

The arrested, majority Saudis, were members of the largest IS cell busted in the country, Xinhua said citing a report in Al Arabiya.

The announcement came a day after an Islamic State attack on a crowded marketplace in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province killed at least 115 people.

The suspects are accused of attacking a mosque in Qudayh in Massachusetts, killing 21 people, and a Damman mosque the following week, killing three.

The interior ministry said in a statement that the majority of those arrested are Saudi citizens who belonged to “cluster cells” managed from overseas with the aim of “sowing sectarian strife and spreading chaos” in the kingdom.

ISIS, which considers Shi’ites to be heretics, claimed responsibility for the mosque attacks.

The raids by authorities were initiated after a series of attacks against security forces and a minority Shia community, which supporters of Islamic state (IS, formerly ISIS) claim to have carried out.

In addition some were arrested for “working to spread the deviant thought via the Internet”.

The worldwide community’s nuclear deal with Iran presents Israel with a unique opportunity to band together with Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to create a “new order” in the Middle East, argued a former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency during a radio interview Sunday.

It controls swathes of neighbouring Iraq and Syria, and has claimed widespread abuse, including the beheading of foreign hostages.

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The Saudi government placed the Islamic State group in its terror organization list past year and has joined the U.S.-led coalition targeting it in Syria and Iraq, according to Fox News.

Iraqi speaker says attack in Diyala marketplace 'sectarian' | The Olympian The