ISIS Claims Responsibility For Failed Attack on Saudi State Security Building

The leader of the ISIS terrorist group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at a mosque in Iraq on July 5, 2014. (AP Photo/extremist video)

CAIRO–ISIS claimed responsibility for a failed attack on a Saudi state security building northwest of Riyadh, the group said through a statement on April 21.

Saudi state media earlier said four terrorists who targeted the Mabaheth (domestic intelligence) station in Zulfi, a small city about 250 miles northwest of the capital Riyadh, were killed by authorities who thwarted the attack.

Three security force members were injured in the attack, the spokesman said, adding that security services were dealing with “explosive materials” and other items left behind during the incident.

Online videos, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed a car at a checkpoint with its doors open and two bloody corpses splayed on the ground nearby. Gunshots could be heard.

Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said the attackers had been carrying machine guns, bombs, and Molotov cocktails.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a video later on Sunday in which four masked assailants pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Reuters could not independently verify the claim and authorities did not officially identify the assailants.

ISIS terrorists have targeted security installations for years in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, after the authorities crushed an al Qaeda insurgency more than a decade ago.

Last year, a member of the security forces and a Bangladeshi resident were killed in an assault on a security checkpoint in nearby Buraidah, and a policeman was killed in a separate attack in the western city of Taif.