Saudi interior ministry officials on Saturday said authorities arrested 431 suspected Daesh members and thwarted several planned attacks on mosques and security forces, Reuters reported.
“The number arrested to date is 431, most of them citizens, in addition to participants from other nationalities … six successive suicide operations which targeted mosques in the Eastern province on every Friday timed with assassinations of security men were thwarted,” read a ministry statement, according to state-run SPA news agency.
Daesh claimed two suicide attacks in recent months on Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, killing 25 people and prompting major concerns for security in the oil-rich region.
The Saudi interior ministry statement also said that authorities prevented planned attacks on a diplomatic mission, as well as security and government facilities in Sharurah province, SPA reported.
Daesh has encouraged attacks in the kingdom, home to Islam’s holiest sites. Militants from the radical group have said they plan to drive away the kingdom’s minority Shiite Muslims, whom they believe are heretics.
