431 linked to ISIL arrested in Saudi Arabia

The cells were involved in several attacks and plots, including suicide bombing attacks in the country's East.

RIYADH // Saudi Arabian authorities announced on Saturday that they have broken up an organisation linked to ISIL and have so far arrested 431 of its members, mostly Saudi Arabians.

Authorities have “managed over the past few weeks to destroy an organisation made of a cluster of cells, which is linked to the terrorist Daesh organisation,” the interior ministry said.

Network members were engaged in a “plot managed from areas of unrest abroad, with the aim of sowing sectarian sedition and spreading chaos,” the ministry said.

The cells were involved in several attacks and plots, including the deadly suicide bombings that hit Shiite mosques in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, it said.

The ISIL, which considers Shiites heretics, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

ISIL controls swathes of neighbouring Iraq and Syria, and has claimed widespread abuses including the beheading of foreign hostages.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbours last year joined a US-led military coalition bombing ISIL in Syria, raising concerns about possible retaliation in the kingdom.

* Agence France-Presse