Four Killed In Failed Attack On Saudi State Security Building

Four assailants were killed on Sunday when authorities thwarted an attack on a state security building in Saudi Arabia’s central Riyadh province, authorities told state media.

The four had helped carry out the attack at the Mabaheth (domestic intelligence) station in Zulfi, a small city about 250 kms (155 miles) northwest of the capital Riyadh, a spokesman for Saudi state security said.

Three security force members were injured in the attack, the spokesman said, adding that security services were dealing with “explosive materials” and other items left behind during the incident.

Online videos, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed a car at a checkpoint with its doors open and two bloody corpses splayed on the ground nearby. Gunshots could be heard.

Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said the attackers had been carrying machine guns, bombs and Molotov cocktails.

Militants have targeted security installations for years in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, after the authorities crushed an al-Qaeda insurgency more than a decade ago.

Last year, a member of the security forces and a Bangladeshi resident were killed in an assault on a security checkpoint in nearby Buraidah, and a policeman was killed in a separate attack in the western city of Taif.

The assailants were said to Saudi militants who belong to Islamic State, Saudi-owned Arabiya TV said in a tweet, citing its own correspondent.

Also:

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court has sentenced four people to death by hanging for belonging to the Islamic State militant group and committing terrorist crimes in Iraq and Syria, a judiciary statement said on Sunday.

The four men, wanted by Iraqi authorities, were handed to Iraq by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the statement said.

A Baghdad criminal court convicted them for joining IS and “carrying out criminal operations that targeted innocent civilians with the aim of undermining peace and stability in Iraq and Syria”.

A judicial source said the four men were Iraqi.

In February, Iraq’s military said the SDF had handed 280 Iraqi and foreign detainees to Baghdad.

Thousands of foreigners have fought on behalf of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria since at least 2014. Many foreign women came – or were brought – from overseas to join the militants.

Iraqi courts are relying on counter terrorism laws to prosecute thousands of suspects, including foreign fighters, for joining the ultra-hardline jihadist group.

Human rights groups have accused Iraqi and other regional forces of inconsistencies in the judicial process and flawed trials leading to unfair convictions.

Islamic State captured a third of Iraq in 2014 but was largely defeated both there and in neighboring Syria where US-backed forces proclaimed last month the capture of Islamic State’s last territory, eliminating its rule over a self-proclaimed “caliphate”.

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