Saudi Arabia teacher shoots dead 6 colleagues

A teacher in the Jazan, in the south of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has stormed a education building armed with an automatic rifle, killing no less than six according to State media with confirmation from a senior Saudi Interior Ministry official, who said that the suspect was in custody.

Al-Ekhbariya state television, citing police, said the suspect was not an employee but had some business at the ministry.

Riyadh-Tehran ties are at an all time low after the Saudi execution of the Saudi Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and the subsequent Iranian ransacking of the Saudi embassy in Tehran in early January.

The brief reports on the state television channel’s website and Twitter account did not elaborate or offer a reason for the shooting at an education department building.

Ministry spokesman General Mansour al-Turki said the assault took place took place in the Aldair Bani Malik governorate in the southern province of Jazan, several kilometers from the Yemeni border, at about 2:00 pm (1100 GMT).

It is is leading a coalition of countries conducting air strikes and ground operations in neighbouring Yemen in support of the country’s internationally recognised government, resulting rebels targeting Jizan with missiles and cross-border fire.

More than 6,100 people have been killed in the conflict since March, about half of them civilians, according to United Nations estimates.

Elsewhere in the kingdom there have been mass shootings and bombings claimed by the Islamic State group against the Shiite minority community.

Bashar al-Assad will not be ruling Syria in the future and Russia’s military interventions will not help him stay in power, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a German newspaper in an interview published on Saturday.

Saudi Arabia has expressed its readiness to deploy special forces to Syria if the US-led coalition allegedly hitting Daesh militants decides to deploy ground troops.