Saudi Arabia authorities have reported that they prevented a plot targeting at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, one of Islam’s holiest places, during the final hours of Ramadan.
Saudi Interior Ministry officials said that a man accused of planning the attack on Islam’s holiest places blew himself up in Mecca during a gunfight with police.
Police said that in series of police raids, five people, including one woman, were arrested in Mecca and in the kingdom’s Red Sea port of Jeddah,
The five people arrested were thought to be part of the same militant group, but there was no word on the identity or affiliation of the bomber who blew himself up on Friday
Meanwhile, Saudi authorities could not name the Islamic State group as the mastermind of the terror plot, even as the IS has a long history of antipathy toward the Saudi royal family.
Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry spokesman, Major General Mansur al-Turki, told state-owned Al Arabiya Television the incident in Mecca was not the first potential terror attack that security forces had averted recently, but added, “We hope it is the last, especially concerning the Grand Mosque.”
Both Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah condemned the alleged plot against Mecca, which Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said was another sign that “terrorism is rampant and growing now across the whole world.”