Bomber blows himself up as Saudis foil Mecca plot

Riyadh, June 24

A suicide bomber blew himself up near the Grand Mosque in Mecca as the police disrupted a plot to target the holiest site in Islam just as the fasting month of Ramadan ends, Saudi security forces said today.

The Interior Ministry said it launched a raid around Jiddah, as well as two areas in Mecca itself, including the Ajyad Al-Masafi neighbourhood, located near the Grand Mosque.

There, the police said they engaged in a shootout at a three-story house with a suicide bomber, who blew himself up and caused the building to collapse. He was killed, while the blast wounded six foreigners and five members of security forces, according to the Interior Ministry’s statement. Five others were arrested, including a woman, it said.

Saudi state television aired footage after the raid yesterday near the Grand Mosque, showing police and rescue personnel running through the neighbourhood’s narrow streets.

The blast demolished the building, its walls crushing a parked car. Nearby structures appeared to be peppered with shrapnel and bullet holes.

The Interior Ministry said the thwarted “terrorist plan” would have violated “all sanctities by targeting the security of the Grand Mosque, the holiest place on Earth.”

“They obeyed their evil and corrupt self-serving schemes managed from abroad whose aim is to destabilise the security and stability of this blessed country,” it said.

The ministry did not name the group involved in the attack. The ultraconservative Sunni kingdom battled an Al-Qaida insurgency for years and more recently has faced attacks from a local branch of the Islamic State group. — AP

Grand Mosque target of militants in past too 

• Millions of Muslims from around the world visit the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the burial site of the Prophet Muhammad, every year as part of their pilgrimage. The same day in July, suicide bomb attacks targeted a Shia mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia and near the US Consulate in Jiddah
• The Grand Mosque has been the target of militants before because it represents a symbol of  the ruling Al Saud family’s clout in the Islamic world. The monarch bears the title of “custodian of the two holy mosques” 
• In 1979, some 250 militants seized the mosque and held it for two weeks as they demanded the royal family abdicate the throne. When Saudi troops stormed the mosque, the official death toll was 229, including extremists and soldiers