Riyadh says mosque suicide bomber was Saudi citizen

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia said Saturday that the suicide bomber who detonated an explosives-packed vest in a mosque inside a police headquarters, killing 15 people, was one of its own citizens.

Thursday’s bombing of a mosque frequented by members of a police special weapons and tactics unit in the southern city of Abha was claimed by the Daesh terror group.

The Saudi interior ministry named the bomber as Yussef Bin Sleiman Bin Abdullah Al Sleiman, aged 21.

A ministry spokesman, quoted by El Ekhbariya state television, said 11 of those killed were policemen and four were Bangladeshis who worked at the police compound.

Daesh affiliate “Al Hijaz Province” said in an online statement that it was behind the attack, the latest — and deadliest — against security forces in Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.

It had identified the bomber as Abu Sinan Al Najdi and vowed to carry out fresh strikes against “tyrants in the Arabian Peninsula... in the coming days”.

There was no explanation as to why different names were given, but the one published by Daesh appeared to be an alias.

Daesh, which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq, has expanded across the region, claiming responsibility for attacks on two Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia in May and a third in Kuwait in June.