The ISIS terrorist group claimed responsibility on Thursday for a bomb attack on a Remembrance Day event at a non-Muslim cemetery in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Three people were wounded in the bomb blast on Wednesday that went off during an event marking the 102nd anniversary of the end of the First World War.
The event was being held at Jeddah’s non-Muslim cemetery and was attended by French, American, British, Italian, and Greek officials.
In a statement issued through its official channel on Telegram, ISIS said that its “soldiers” had managed to hide a homemade bomb in the cemetery, which then exploded after several “consuls of crusading countries” gathered there.
Jeddah, the Red Sea port city, saw its Ottoman troops surrender to the local troops backed by the British in 1916 amid the war.
The latest attack follows a stabbing on Oct. 29, when a Saudi man attacked and injured a guard at the French consulate in Jeddah.
On Oct. 18, ISIS called on its supporters to target Westerners, oil pipelines, and economic infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.
Earlier on Thursday, the Saudi embassy in the Netherlands was
sprayed with gunfire by unidentified attackers. No one was hurt in the incident.
Multiple European countries, including
the UK, have recently raised their security alert levels following a series of terrorist attacks.
On Nov. 2, a 20-year-old dual citizen of Austria and North Macedonia
fired at crowds at six different locations in the Austrian capital Vienna, killing four people and wounding 22 before he was killed by police.
On Oct. 29, a Tunisian man shouting “Allahu akbar” allegedly attacked the Notre Dame church in the southern French city of Nice,
beheading an elderly woman and killing two others before being arrested.
European countries, and France in particular, are
targeted in this fresh wave of terror attacks as Muslims in multiple Islamic countries were angered by the display and publication in France of caricatures of Prophet Muhammad.
The caricatures of Muhammad have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with a French history teacher, who was
beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee on Oct. 16, after he used the Muhammad caricatures in a class on freedom of expression.
President Macron has vigorously
defended the cartoons as protected under the right of free speech, triggering protests in multiple Muslim countries.
Islamic terrorist groups ranging from the Taliban in Afghanistan to Hezbollah in Lebanon have condemned Macron’s defense of the Muhammad cartoons.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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