Kuwait identifies Saudi man as Shiite mosque bomber

KUWAIT CITY // Kuwait on Sunday identified a Saudi national as the suicide bomber who killed 26 people at a Shiite mosque, and arrested a number of people in connection with the attack.

Friday’s bombing, which wounded 227 worshippers, was Kuwait’s deadliest militant attack in decades, and was claimed by ISIL’s Saudi affiliate, the Najd Province.

Kuwait’s interior ministry named the bomber as Fahd Suleiman Abdulmohsen Al Qaba’a, and said he landed at Kuwait airport at dawn on Friday – hours before he detonated an explosives-laden vest, according to state-run Kuna news agency.

It said Al Qaba’a was born in 1992, putting him in his early 20s, and released a photograph showing a young bearded man wearing a traditional Saudi national dress.

Also on Sunday, security services arrested the driver of the car that transported the bomber to the Al Imam Al Sadeq mosque in Kuwait City.

He was named as Abdulrahman Sabah Eidan Saud and described as an “illegal resident” born in 1989.

Authorities arrested the car owner, Jarrah Nimr Mejbil Ghazi, on Saturday. He was born in 1988 and also listed as a stateless person.

Kuwait has also detained the owner of the house where the bomber stayed. He was described by the interior ministry as a Kuwaiti citizen who subscribed to “extremist and deviant ideology”.

“Illegal resident” is the official term in Kuwait to describe stateless people, locally known as bidoons, who number around 110,000 and claim the right to citizenship.

The alleged ISIL executioner Mohammed Emwazi, who became known in the media as “Jihadi John”, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin who later moved to London.

Friday’s 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. Nine extremists and four security force members were killed in the gun battles.

Local media said 18 of those killed on Friday were Kuwaitis, three Iranians, two Indians, one each from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and one bidoon.

Officials said the bombing was clearly meant to stir enmity between majority Sunnis and minority Shiites and harm the comparatively harmonious ties between the sects in Kuwait.

Shiites make up between 15 and 30 per cent of the population of Kuwait, a mostly Sunni country where members of both communities live side by side with little apparent friction.

On Saturday, thousands of Kuwaitis braved scorching summer heat to attend the funerals of 18 victims, despite fasting for Ramadan and temperatures of 45°C.

“This crowd is the proof that the objectives of the criminal act have failed,” parliament speaker Marzouk Al Ghanem said.

The mourners, including women, carried Kuwaiti flags and black and green banners bearing religious slogans.

The health ministry said 40 of the wounded are still in hospital.

In Iraq, relatives wept as the coffins of the eight other victims arrived and were taken inside the airport terminal at Najaf.

They were buried at dawn on Sunday in Najaf’s Wadi Al Salam cemetery, according to deputy provincial council head Luay Al Yasiri.

“We want to deliver a message to Daesh that we are united brothers among the Sunnis and Shiites, and they cannot divide us,” said Abdulfatah Al Mutawwia, a Kuwaiti living in Iraq who lost his brother in the bombing.

In a show of solidarity, tens of thousands of people headed by Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, offered condolences on Saturday to relatives of victims at the Grand Mosque, the largest place of worship for Sunni Muslims.

The cabinet announced after an emergency meeting on Friday that all security agencies and police had been put on alert to confront what it called “black terror”.

Justice and Islamic affairs minister Yacoub Al Sane said additional security measures would be taken around mosques and places of worship.

The emir, government, parliamentary and political groups and clerics have all said Friday’s attack aimed to stir up sectarian strife in the emirate.

ISIL considers Shiites, who comprise about a third of Kuwait’s 1.3 million native population, to be heretics.

* Agence France-Presse and Reuters