IS audio vows more attacks following Saudi mosque bombing

The Islamic State (IS) militant group claimed responsibility for the first two blasts. The Interior Ministry on Saturday identified 11 of those killed belonging to the force, while four were Bangladeshi workers.

He further said that the bomb targeted police trainees as they were in the middle of prayer.

The attacker struck as men were praying in the mosque in the headquarters of the Special Emergency Force in Abha, the capital of Asir province, a ministry spokesman told state news agency SPA.

Previously, another Islamic State affiliate, Wilayat Najd, had claimed and carried out attacks targeting Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The speaker on the recording vowed more attacks, saying Saudi rulers and troops “will not enjoy peace” for taking part in the U.S.-led coalition battling IS in Iraq and Syria.

In the south-western city of Taif, a policeman was gunned down on July 3 during a raid in which three people were arrested and flags of ISIS found, police said earlier. If confirmed by the Islamic State, it will represent the expansion of the militant group into western Saudi Arabia with the emergence of a new wilayat.

The assault was lovely in its timing and goal, coming simply weeks after the Saudi Inside Ministry introduced the arrest of greater than 400 suspects in an anti-terrorism sweep.

Al-Qaeda waged a campaign of shootings and bombings against foreigners and Saudi security personnel between 2003 and 2007.

Saud also confessed to having transported the explosive belt from near the border with Saudi Arabia where two Saudi brothers, now held in the kingdom, had left it.

May 29 – The Imam Hussein mosque in the Shiite neighborhood of Anoud in Dammam was attacked at noon by a suicide bomber killing three worshippers. The strike killed 17 people, including at least 10 who were members of the Saudi Interior Ministry’s special forces. It has also sheltered Yemen’s exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi whose loyalists at home are battling Iran-backed Shiite rebels known as Houthis.

On May 22, a suicide bomber detonated himself, killing 21 people, at the Imam Ali mosque in the Persian Gulf-area village of Qudayh, in one of Saudi Arabia’s few Shiite population centers in the majority Sunni kingdom. The rebels have carried out a number of cross-border attacks against military targets.