Saudi Arabia says it has arrested 113 al-Qaeda militants including suicide bombers who had been planning attacks on energy facilities in the world’s top oil exporter.
The interior ministry said its sweep, among the biggest in several years, netted 58 suspected Saudi militants and 52 from Yemen, which jumped to the forefront of western security concerns after a failed December attack on a US-bound plane.
The militants were backed by al-Qaeda in Yemen, it added.
The 113 militants were organised into three cells, including two planning suicide attacks on oil and security facilities in the oil-producing Eastern Province, home to the world’s biggest oil refinery.
“The 12 in the two cells were suicide bombers,” security affairs spokesman Mansour al-Turki said. “We have compelling evidence against all of those arrested that they were plotting terrorist attacks inside the kingdom.”
Authorities seized weapons, ammunition and explosive belts. They said the militants were linked to a “deviant group that has chosen Yemen as a base for the launch of its criminal operations”, employing terms used to typically refer to al-Qaeda.
“The deviant group is using elements inside the kingdom who came [to Saudi Arabia] under the cover of work or pilgrimage or entered illegally,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Yemen capital of Sanaa, struggling to stabilise a fractious country, has come under international pressure to end a northern war and focus on fighting al- Qaeda, whose Yemen-based arm admitted responsibility for the attempted December aircraft bombing.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest petroleum exporter and is also a crucial US ally in the Middle East.
It was forced to confront its own role in rising militancy at home and abroad when its nationals turned out to be behind the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The mastermind of those attacks, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was born in Saudi Arabia.
Authorities said the two suicide bombing cells comprised 11 Saudis and a Yemeni who security officials described as the brother of a prominent member of al-Qaeda. It said they were in the early stages of preparing suicide attacks.
Some 101 militants were detained in the southern province of Jazan, near the border with Yemen. In addition to Yemeni and Saudi militants, those arrested also included militants from Bangladesh, Eritrea and Somalia.
The dates of these arrests were not disclosed. “The network . . . which included suicide bombers, was set up to lead attacks within the kingdom and target installations, and monitor security members as potential targets in concurrence with the recent events at the kingdom’s southern borders,” the interior ministry said.
Saudi Arabia and western countries fear that al-Qaeda, whose regional arm is based in Yemen, is exploiting instability on multiple fronts in the impoverished country to launch attacks in the region and beyond.
Riyadh, which was drawn into a Yemeni war with separate Shia insurgents in November, fears Yemen’s fight with al-Qaeda could also spill over in to its territory.
Saudi concerns about Yemen were amplified after the kingdom’s top anti-terrorism official Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was slightly hurt in a suicide attack in his house in September. The attack was carried out by a Saudi bomber posing as a repentant militant returning from Yemen.
Islamist militants launched a violent campaign to topple the US-allied monarchy in 2003, killing nearly 200 people, including foreign residents.
However a Saudi security crackdown, coupled with tighter controls on financing and the spread of militant ideas, helped curb violence inside the kingdom after 2006.