Armed attack in Saudi Arabia kills many

RIYADH: Causalities expected as community centre in Eastern Province  of Saudi Arabia comes under armed attack.

Saudi security forces shot dead a gunman who opened fire on a Shi’ite Muslim meeting hall on Friday in the Eastern city of Saihat, state-owned TV and a resident said.

Saudi-owned television channel Al Ekhbariya TV quoted sources as saying that: “A person who opened fire on a husseiniya was killed, and the attacker was in his twenties,”

The channel said that the motive remained unclear.

Meanwhile, a resident reached by telephone told Reuters that an attacker approached the meeting hall in a taxi but was stopped at a checkpoint. Police arrived and a gun battle broke out, which the resident said injured several people and left the attacker dead.

This is not the first time a Shiite site was targeted in the kingdom this year.

In May, a suicide bomber blew himself up during Friday prayers at a mosque in the village of al-Qadeeh in eastern Saudi Arabia, killing at least 21 and wounding 81 others.  The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group later claimed the deadly attack.

In July, Saudi Arabia arrested 431 people as part of a crackdown on a cluster of cells linked to ISIS.  ISIS targets Shiites to stir sectarian strife in the country. The militant group has also targeted Shiite mosques and places in other regional countries such as Kuwait and Iraq.