Kuwait City – Kuwait’s interior ministry on Monday identified the last Friday mosque bomber as 23 year old, Fahd- Suliman al-Qabaa, a young Saudi Arabian man.
It said the bomber flew into Kuwait’s airport at dawn on Friday, only hours before he detonated an explosives-laden vest at Kuwait City’s Imam al-Sadeq mosque.
The interior ministry said the detained 26 year old, driver of the Japanese-made car, who left the mosque immediately after Friday’s bombing, was an illegal resident named Abdul-Rahman Sabah Aidan.
It said the timing of his arrival suggested that he had a network already in place in Kuwait.
The ministry said the driver was found hiding in one of the houses in the al-Riqqa residential area.
“Initial investigations showed that the owner of the house is a supporter of the deviant ideology.
“The owner of the house, a Kuwaiti citizen, was also detained,’’ the ministry said.
The ministry said it was searching for more partners and aides in this “despicable crime”.
Officials said the bombing was clearly meant to stir enmity between majority Sunnis and minority Shi’ites, and harm the comparatively harmonious ties between the sects in Kuwait.
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Shi’ites are between 15 and 30 per cent of the population of Kuwait, where members of both communities live side by side with little apparent friction.
Meanwhile, Islamic States claimed responsibility for the attack on the mosque, where 2,000 worshippers were praying at the time.
It was one of three attacks on three continents that day apparently linked to hardline Islamists.
The Islamic State militant group issued an audio clip purporting to be a posthumous statement by the bomber, in which he criticises Shi’ite Muslims, “especially in Kuwait”, for what he terms insulting Islam.
“Very, very soon, you will see something unexpected, expect blood, and expect death.
Saudi Arabia interior ministry, in its reaction, said al-Qabaa was not previously known to security authorities, and had flown out of the kingdom to the Bahraini capital Manama on Thursday.
Observers said the attack was the most significant act of Sunni militant violence in Kuwait since 2005, when an al Qaeda-linked group calling itself the Peninsula Lions, clashed with security forces in the streets of Kuwait City.
The group said during the attack, nine Islamists and four security force members were killed in the gun battles.
The group noted that bombing has sharply heightened regional security concerns, because Islamic State appeared to be making good on its threat to step up attacks in the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
They added that the group, seeking to expand from strongholds in Iraq and Syria, said its priority target was the Arabian peninsula, and in particular, Saudi Arabia, home of Islam’s holiest places, from where it planned to expel Shi’ite Muslims. (Reuters/NAN)