Four die as attack on Saudi police station foiled

Monday, 22 April 2019 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Riyadh (Reuters): Four people died as an attack on a police station in Saudi Arabia’s central Riyadh province was foiled, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said on Sunday, citing its own sources.

The four casualties had helped carry out the attack at the police station in Zulfi, a small city around 250 km (155 miles) northwest of the capital Riyadh, Al Arabiya said.

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.

Arabiya said the attackers had been carrying machine guns, bombs and Molotov cocktails.

Militants 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.

The Saudi Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Zulfi attack.