Crackdown: Two ‘terrorists’ blow themselves up in Jeddah

Men thought to be plotting attacks against Saudi Arabia; suspect linked to the two also arrested in separate raid

RIYADH: Two men accused of planning attacks against Saudi Arabia blew themselves up during a firefight with security forces in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Saturday and a third was arrested in another operation, the country’s interior ministry said.

Saudi security forces raided a suspected terrorist hideout used for making explosive belts and other devices in Jeddah’s eastern Al-Harazat district, a spokesman for the ministry said in a statement.

Two men holed up inside the premises shot at security forces, who returned fire, according to the statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. The suspects refused to surrender and “blew themselves up by detonating their explosive belts,” it said, confirming an earlier statement by Jeddah authorities.

Saudi-owned Arabiya TV showed footage of smoke rising above Jeddah and an explosion tearing through a building. Pictures posted on Twitter showed a fire at the site of the shootout.

The interior ministry spokesman also said a third suspect was arrested on Saturday in a security operation targeting another Jeddah neighbourhood. The suspect, a Saudi national, is believed to have had links to the two men who blew themselves up. He was arrested along with a Pakistani woman whom he identified as his wife, the spokesman said.

Earlier this month, security forces shot and killed two suspected terrorists including an explosive belt maker during a police operation in the north of Riyadh. Both were Saudi citizens.

At the end of October, authorities said they had foiled a plot to bomb a football stadium in Jeddah during a football match and dismantled two ‘terrorist’ cells linked to the Islamic State group. Eight suspects were arrested in the operation, including two Pakistanis, a Syrian and a Saudi.

The Islamic State has carried out a series of bombings and shootings in Saudi Arabia since mid-2014 that have killed scores of people, mostly members of the Shia community and security services. Last year, a suicide bomber was killed and two people were wounded in a blast near the US Consulate in Jeddah, the first bombing in years to target foreigners in the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia is a member of the US-led international coalition that has been battling Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The kingdom has also formed a 39-nation military alliance to combat terrorism and has reportedly approached Pakistan’s former army chief General (retd) Raheel Sharif to command it.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2017.