Nine held for deadly shooting in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia Tuesday arrested a cell of nine people in connection with a deadly shooting Monday, in which five people were killed and nine injured, a media report said.

The head of the arrestees, all Saudis, sneaked to the country from the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq where he illegally entered to fight with extremists, reported Xinhua citing sources in an Al-Arabiya report as saying.

Earlier report said six men were arrested in the case.

On Monday, a shooting occurred in Al-Ahsa Governorate in the Eastern Province, one of the main centers of the Shiite Muslims minority in Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, where the Shiite Muslims were in ceremony to mark their Ashoura, the holy day. The day is observed to pay respect to the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of Prophet Mohammad who is revered by the Shiites.

The shooters arrived in a car and started to fire at a group of people at the scene, a spokesperson of Eastern Province Police told the local Sabaq e-newspaper.

All the victims are Shiites Muslims, however, several Saudi Shiite figures confirmed to Al-Arabiya that the attack did not target Shiites in particular, but to promote sectarian tensions in the country.

An Interior Ministry spokesperson described it as a terrorist attack and likened it to other terrorism incidents in Riyadh, Ahsa and Eastern Region.