RIYADH // Saudi authorities have blamed a deadly attack targeting Shiite worshippers during a major religious festival on militants linked to Al Qaeda.
Masked gunmen late on Monday killed at least five people celebrating Ashura, one of the holiest Shiite festivals, in eastern Saudi Arabia.
The next day two Saudi policemen and two suspects linked to the incident died in a shootout in Qassim region, north of the capital Riyadh.
Officers rounded up 15 suspects in several cities after the initial shooting in the Shiite-populated Eastern Province.
“They are followers of the deviant ideology,” interior ministry spokesman General Mansur Al Turki was quoted by the Asharq Al Awsat daily as saying.
He used the term by which Saudi authorities describe the ideology of Al Qaeda.
No group has so far claimed the attack.
Radical Sunni groups consider Shiites heretics and have targeted them elsewhere in the region, including attacks that killed more than 40 people in Baghdad in the 48 hours preceding the peak of Ashura on Tuesday.
Citing medical sources, Asharq Al Awsat said the attack left eight people dead and seven wounded.
Police gave a different toll of five dead and nine wounded.
Gen Turki said the security services had in the past 24 hours hunted down suspects involved in the “terrorist” attacks in six Saudi cities.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s minister of culture and information was sacked by a royal decree published by the official SPA news agency only hours after he announced the shutdown of a privately owned Sunni television channel, known for its anti-Shiite rhetoric.
“I had ordered the shut down of Wesal channel’s bureau in Riyadh and banning it from broadcasting in the kingdom,” Abdlaziz Khoja wrote on his Twitter account on Tuesday. “It is not a even a Saudi channel.”
Wesal channel is known for hosting Sunni clerics who frequently criticise the Shiite faith.
* Agence France-Press