SAUDI ARABIA: Ministry of Interior spokesman says a shooting incident in the country's eastern province was carried out by 'criminal elements'

Record ID: 188870

  • Title: SAUDI ARABIA: Ministry of Interior spokesman says a shooting incident in the country's eastern province was carried out by 'criminal elements'
  • Date: 25th November 2011
  • Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
  • Embargoed: 10th December 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia
  • Country: Saudi Arabia
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA7M9D8DENFO1WSQDS250OOU34Q
  • Story Text: Saudi Arabia's interior ministry on Thursday (November 24) played down a shooting incident in the country's eastern province, saying the problem was limited to a small area.
    Two people were killed and three wounded in an exchange of fire between Saudi security forces and what the interior ministry called gunmen serving a foreign power.
    In a statement quoted on the Saudi Press Agency, the ministry said shooting erupted on Wednesday during the funeral of a person killed in what it described as a string of attacks earlier this week on security checkpoints in the province, where much of the kingdom's Shi'ite minority lives.
    Addressing a news conference in the capital, Riyadh, a ministry spokesman said the incident had happened in a residential neighbourhood.
    "There was an outbreak of firing carried out by criminal elements who infiltrated the citizens and started shooting from residential areas and narrow streets," Major General Mansur al-Turki said.
    Echoing language it used after an attack on a police station in the eastern province last month, the ministry pointed the finger at 'foreign masters'.
    Previous references to foreign meddling have been widely read to mean Shi'ite Iran, the Sunni-led kingdom's rival for influence in the Gulf, which Sunni Arab monarchies in the region saw as the force behind unrest earlier this year in majority Shi'ite Bahrain. Iran has denied repeated accusations that it is trying to destabilise Bahrain.
    Al-Turki insisted the recent shooting incident was not symptomatic of a wider problem.
    "We are talking now about an extremely limited problem. We should not conclude from it that there is a wide or big problem. We are only talking about a problem which we can restrict to one or two places in the province of Qatif," he said.
    Saudi Arabia has avoided mass protests that have led to the downfall of four Arab leaders this year, but small-scale protests have taken place in the eastern province. Activists said authorities responded by deploying armed riot police and establishing checkpoints.
    The province is the centre of Saudi Arabia's oil production facilities and is connected by a 16-mile causeway to Bahrain, where Riyadh sent troops earlier this year to help the fellow-Sunni government crush protests led by Shi'ites.
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