The shooting took place in the Qatif area of Eastern Province

AFP
Riyadh


A gunman opened fire at a Shia gathering in eastern Saudi Arabia yesterday, wounding four people before being killed himself, state TV said.
The shooting took place in the Qatif area of Eastern Province.
“A man who opened fire at a hussainiya in Saihat was killed,” Al-Ekhbariya news channel reported, without saying how he died.
A hussainiya is a Shia hall used for commemorations.
“Four wounded, including a woman, in the shooting,” the channel said, adding that the attacker was 20 years old and his motives were unknown.
The Al Arabiya TV said the gunman had killed five people in the attack.
Last year, gunmen killed seven Shias, including children, in the eastern town of Al-Dalwa, at a similar gathering.
The interior ministry said the suspects in that unprecedented attack were linked to the Islamic State (IS) group.
The militant group,  in a statement distributed online, later yesterday claimed responsibility for the Qatif attack.
A witness to yesterday’s attack, Ali al-Bahrani, told AFP that “a gunman began randomly shooting at people attending a sermon”.  
He said at least three people were wounded.
“I think there were three or four injuries, minor injuries,” said Hussein al-Nemr, an area resident who said the shooting was one of three incidents yesterday evening.
Nemr, speaking from Saihat, said a gunman had stolen a taxi in neighbouring Dammam city, and a shooting also occurred at a mosque in Saihat but nobody was injured there.
“We are not sure yet if they are linked to each other,” he told AFP.
Security has been tightened at Shia facilities since May when separate suicide mosque bombings killed 25 people.
Both attacks were claimed by IS.
IS, which has also targeted Saudi police, controls swathes of neighbouring Iraq and Syria where it has carried out widespread abuses.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbours last year joined a United States-led military coalition bombing IS in Syria.
In July, the interior ministry said it had broken up an IS-linked network and arrested more than 430 suspects involved in attacks and plots.
Earlier yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, named IS as an enemy of Islam.
“The reality is that they are shedding Muslim blood and destroying Islam. There is no good in them,” he said during weekly prayers at the Imam Turki bin Abdullah mosque in Riyadh.
“They are neither an Islamic state nor mujahedeen or Islamic mercenaries. Their faith is falsehood... their reality is bloodshed and looting.”