ISIL claims suicide bombing in Riyadh

Before carrying out the attack the bomber killed his own uncle.

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DUBAI // A suicide bomber wounded two policemen at a checkpoint near a high-security prison in the Saudi capital Riyadh in an attack claimed by ISIL.

The group said that the bomber, identified by Saudi authorities as Abdullah Al Rashid, 19, had also killed his uncle, a colonel in the interior ministry, before blowing himself up, the SITE Intelligence monitoring group said.

ISIL named the slain colonel as Rashid Ibrahim Al Sufyan and said that Al Rashid had machine-gunned him in his own home.

The wounded policemen were in a “stable condition” in hospital, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The militant group, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria, has expanded its operations into Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Kuwait and Yemen this year with a string of deadly attacks.

Most have targeted the Gulf states’ Shiite communities, regarded as heretics by the Sunni extremists.

* Agence France-Presse