DUBAI (Web Desk) – Kuwait has arrested several people on suspicion of involvement in the bombing of a mosque on Friday that killed 27 people, a security source said on Saturday.
“Numerous arrests of (people)… suspected of having ties with the suicide bomber have been made,” said the source.
Read more: 27 killed, 202 wounded in Kuwait mosque blast
Terrorist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing, which was the Gulf Arab country’s worst militant attack in years and according to the interior ministry also wounded more than 200.
IS has carried out similar recent attacks in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Yemen. However, this is the first attack on a Shia mosque to take place in Kuwait.
Kuwaiti daily al-Qabas said state security had arrested three people suspected of being involved.
Parliament member Khalil al-Salih was at the Imam al-Sadeq Mosque in the Sawaber district in the eastern part of the Kuwaiti capital when the attack occurred.
He said worshippers were kneeling in prayer when the bomber walked in and detonated his explosives, destroying walls and the ceiling.
“It was obvious from the suicide bomber’s body that he was young. He walked into the prayer hall during sujood [kneeling in prayer], he looked… in his 20s, I saw him with my own eyes,” Khalil al-Salih told Reuters news agency.
DAY OF MOURNING
Kuwait is observing a day of mourning after 27 people died in the attack on a Shia mosque during Friday prayers.
Another 227 people were wounded in the Imam Sadiq Mosque in the capital Kuwait City. Images circulating online show bodies on the floor amid debris.
A spokesman for the Kuwait National Petroleum Company said security was being stepped up at oil installations around the country in the wake of the bombing.
Footage said to be taken in the aftermath of the blast showed dozens of men in blood-splattered white robes spilling out of the smoke-filled mosque into the street outside.
State TV showed the Kuwaiti Emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, visiting the damaged mosque.
An IS affiliate calling itself the Najd Province – the same group that claimed a pair of bombing attacks on Shia mosques in Saudi Arabia in recent weeks – said it was behind the attack.
A spokesman for IS this week urged the militant group’s followers to step up attacks during the Islamic month of Ramazan.
