Saudi authorities on Saturday announced that they have broken up an organisation linked to the Islamic State group and have so far arrested 431 of its members, mostly Saudis.
Authorities have “managed over the past few weeks to destroy an organisation made of a cluster of cells, which is linked to the terrorist Daesh organisation,” the interior ministry said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
Network members were engaged in a “plot managed from areas of unrest abroad, with the aim of sowing sectarian sedition and spreading chaos”, the ministry said.
The cells were involved in several attacks and plots, including deadly suicide bombings at Shiite mosques in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, it said.
The ministry said that authorities foiled attacks plotted during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, including a bombing at a mosque belonging to security forces in Riyadh and Shiite mosques in Eastern Province.