Four killed in S’Arabia suicide bombing

Three people and a suicide bomber have been killed in a blast near a Shi’ite mosque in Saudi Arabia’s eastern city of Dammam.
There were conflicting reports about what happened, with Saudi’s interior ministry saying the bomb had gone off in a car park near the mosque.
“Authorities have managed to foil a terrorist crime targeting people performing the Friday prayers at Al-Anoud mosque in Dammam,” said a ministry spokesman quoted by the Saudi Press Agency.
The bomber “detonated the explosive belt he was wearing at the mosque entrance as security officials were on their way to inspect him”, said the spokesman, adding that four other people were wounded.
However, one eyewitness said the bomber blew himself up after he was stopped by security guards as he tried to get into the only Shi’ite mosque in Dammam.
Residents had set up the patrols to search those entering mosques during prayers, witnesses said, while women have been stopped from praying at the mosque this week because of security fears.
The attack, which set vehicles alight and sent a cloud of black smoke into the air, came a week after another suicide bombing at another Shi’ite mosque killed 21 people, heightening sectarian tensions in the Sunni-majority kingdom.
Islamic State militants said they had carried out the attack, reports Sky News.
The Arab Spring uprising in neighbouring Bahrain in 2011 inspired Saudi Shi’ites in the east to take to the streets in protest at how they were treated and to demand greater rights.
The protests led to hundreds of arrests and the sentencing to death of outspoken cleric Nimr al-Nimr last year