Saudi Arabia thwarts ISIS attacks, arrests 400

Saudi Arabia said it has arrested 431 suspected Islamic State terrorists and thwarted six suicide attacks by militants.

The interior ministry said they had thwarted planned attacks on mosques, security forces and a diplomatic mission and arrested 431 people.

The main suspect in the deadly suicide bombing attack at a mosque in Kuwait was identified as a Saudi national.

The cells were involved in several attacks and plots, including the deadly suicide bombings that hit Shi’ite mosques in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, it said.

Most of those arrested were Saudi citizens, the ministry said in its statement, published by the official SPA news agency. Those attacks left more than 220 dead.

“It sends a message that the Ministry of Interior is not losing a grip and wraps up the potential nodes of Daesh recruits in the kingdom”, he said, using an alternate name for the group.

“They are aiming to spread terrorism in Saudi Arabia, and they wish to create chaos and rift in the country”. He also blamed some of the suspects for the fatal shooting of eight worshippers in the town of al-Ahsa in November and the killing of three security officers in two separate shootings in Riyadh this year.

Saudi Arabia has played a leading role in a military intervention against Shiite rebels in Yemen and is part of U.S.- led operations against the Islamic State in Syria, Bloomberg reports.

The Islamic State group, which controls a third of Syria and Iraq in its self-declared caliphate, has not commented on the claims.

A security source told Asharq Al-Awsat the attacker had been identified as Abdullah Fahd Abdullah Al-Rasheed, a19-year-old Saudi national who had never traveled outside the Kingdom.