Gunmen shot dead at least five people in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province yesterday in an attack on Shiite Muslims during one of their most important religious festivals, the state’s Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
Nine people were wounded by the unidentified attackers late on Monday night in the village of al-Dalwah in al-Ahsa District, a police spokesman was quoted as saying.
“As a group of citizens was leaving a building ... three masked men opened fire at them with machine guns and pistols,” the spokesman said, according to SPA, adding that the incident was under investigation.
Photo: AFP
Al-Ahsa is one of the main centers of minority Shiite Muslims in Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, who are now marking Ashura — which commemorates the killing of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Imam Hussein, by the army of Caliph Yazid in 680 AD, the formative event in Shiite Islam — with public ceremonies and processions.
Local news site hasanews.com said that six people were killed and 12 wounded, some seriously, in what it called a “terrorist attack” on the ceremonies in the village.
It said police were mobilized into the scene and closed off the area. There was no word on what happened to the attackers.
Videos purporting to show the aftermath of the attack posted on social media showed a body lying in a pool of blood outside a building, with people milling around calling for help. The authenticity of the videos could not immediately be confirmed.
One of the videos showed a man holding spent bullet casings at the bloodstained entrance to what appears to be a Shiite place of worship.
In Iraq, Ashura celebrations were also taking place yesterday, with hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims packing the shrine city of Karbalah, braving the threat of jihadist attack to mark one of the holiest days of their faith.
The festival has been marred by attacks in previous years and this year’s commemorations have an extra element of danger since the hardline Sunni group Islamic State — formerly know as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — took over parts of the country.
Sunni extremists, who consider Shiites to be heretics, have killed dozens of pilgrims marking Ashura in past years.
Tens of thousands of security personnel and allied militiamen have been deployed to protect the pilgrims in a major test for the new government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.
Hundreds of men dressed in white robes performed a ritual called tatbeer, cutting their heads with swords and spears in mourning for the slain imam. Only a small minority of pilgrims perform the ritual, which has been condemned by some Shiite clerics.
Thousands of black-clad pilgrims then gathered to listen to the story of Hussein and the battle in which he died, beating their heads and crying in mourning and guilt.
According to Shiite beliefs, Hussein sacrificed himself in opposition to Yazid’s un-Islamic and unjust rule, defying the caliph’s army with only a few dozen followers.
The division between what would become the Shiite and Sunni faiths began in a dispute over who should succeed Mohammed and was solidified with Hussein’s death.
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