Riyadh: While the rites of Ashura appeared to pass without a major incident of violence in war-torn Iraq, the death toll from Monday night's shootings in eastern Saudi Arabia rose to eight from five reported previously, with another 12 injured, the Interior Ministry reported.
Seven of the eight people were killed at a Shiite Muslim place of worship known as a husseiniyah in the village of al-Dalwah in al-Ahsa district of Eastern Province, home to many of Saudi Arabia's Shiite Muslims. The other person was found shot dead in a car in a neighbouring village, a ministry spokesman said.
“As a group of citizens was leaving a building... three masked men opened fire at them with machine guns and pistols,” the Interior Ministry spokesman said, according to SPA, adding that the incident was under investigation.
Saudi-owned Al Arabiya reported that the majority of those injured in the attack were children, adding that the governer of Al Ahsa, Prince Bader Bin Jalwi, paid some of the a visit at King Fahad Hospital in the city of Hufoof.
The three assailants fired machineguns and pistols on a crowd leaving a building in the village of Al Dalwa in the Al Ahsa district of Eastern Province, a police spokesman cited by the official SPA news agency said.
Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Scholar’s, an Islamic clerical body appointed by the king, issued a statement calling the shooting a “criminal act” and called on citizens to stand as “a united front against those treacherous criminals”. It also called them “enemies of this faith and this nation who want to undermine the nation’s unity and stability”.
The governer of Al Ahsa, Prince Bader Al Jalwi, said during a visit to King Fahad Hospital in Hufoof that Al Ahsa “will remain united” in fighting such attacks, calling it a “dispicable, criminal act of terrorism that harms the image of Islam and Muslims”. He added that such acts were rejected.
A local rights activist said that the victims were mostly young men who were standing at the entrance of the local gathering place, known as Hussainiya, where the commemorative ceremony was taking place.
“It seems the criminals were in a hurry and opened fire on youngsters at the entrance and fled,” Ali Al Bahrani, a local rights activist said.
He said there were reports that Saudi security forces had found a vehicle apparently used by the attackers, with automatic weapons inside it, and arrested one person in connection with the attack.
“This seems to be the work of criminals and terrorists trying to mix cards, but security authorities seem determined to strike with an iron fist,” he said.
The commemoration of Ashura, which marks the martyrdom of Hussain Bin Ali, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and one of Shiite Islam’s most revered figures, peaks on Tuesday.
Saudi Arabian security officials moved aggressively on Tuesday to stamp out further anti-Shiite violence, arresting 15 people in six cities and killing two others in connection with what the Interior Ministry called a terrorist ambush.
At least two security officers were killed and two wounded in the crackdown on the suspected mosque assailants, who were armed with pistols and machine guns, the Interior Ministry and government-run Saudi media reported.
The identities of the assailants and their affiliations were not disclosed. But the ambush raised speculation that Saudi-born Sunni jihadists who have joined militant groups in Iraq and Syria had brought their violent zealotry home, an outcome that Saudi rulers have long feared.
A 2001 census in Saudi Arabia put the country's Shiite population at 1 million, but a leaked US diplomatic cable from 2008 suggested that Shiites could make up 12 per cent of the country's population of 20 million.
