Riyadh (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Twelve special forces soldiers and three emergency workers from Asir province were killed and seven others were wounded in a suicide attack on the mosque yesterday during noon prayer. There were numerous injured, one of whom is in a critical condition.
The attack occurred in the town of Abha (province of Asir in the south of the country), near the border with Yemen. A group called the "Province of al-Hijaz", linked to the Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the attack, identifying the bomber by the name of Abu Sinan al-Najdi, who infiltrated the security forces and detonated an explosives vest he was wearing.
The group had threatened to launch new attacks against "tyrants of the Arabian Peninsula ... in the coming days."
The Grand Mufti of Arabia, Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh, condemned the attack as "a horrible criminal act", and said that such violence will only lead to strengthen national unity against terrorism.
The attack on the mosque in Asir is the third attack in a year on a mosque in Saudi Arabia. On 22 May, a young man in his twenties blew himself up at the mosque of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib Al-Qadeeh (Qatif) during Friday prayers, killing 21 people and wounding hundreds more.
A week later, on May 29, a terrorist in women's clothes blew himself up with an explosive belt at the entrance of the mosque of Al-Anoud just as he was stopped by security guards. The blast killed four people.
Both attacks were claimed by Islamic State militants.
Saudi Arabia is in a difficult and contradictory position. First, there are internal problems, due to the presence of a large Shiite community, marginalized by power and wealth. Then there are those of its regional alliances. At the beginning of the Arab Spring Saudi Arabia supported Islamic fundamentalist groups; it has supported rebels fighting Bashar Assad (including al-Nusra Front and for a time even the Islamic State); now it is leading a coalition to fight the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, and in doing so, is helping the expansion of the Islamic State militia in the neighboring country, a sworn enemy of the Shiites.
The organized group Islamic radicals see the Saudi rulers as traitors of Islam and collaborators of the "pagans" (the United States).