{"id":34277,"date":"2017-05-01T11:35:05","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T11:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/saudi-arabia-arrests-46-over-2016-medina-mosque\/"},"modified":"2017-05-01T11:34:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T11:34:59","slug":"saudi-arabia-arrests-46-over-2016-medina-mosque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/saudi-arabia-arrests-46-over-2016-medina-mosque\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia arrests 46 over 2016 Medina mosque attack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Attacks took place in July during final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, killing four security officers.}<\/p>\n<p>Saudi Arabia has arrested 46 people suspected of belonging to a cell responsible for an attack in Medina outside of one of Islam&#8217;s holiest sites last year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Investigations revealed they were directly involved in the crime of targeting worshippers in the Prophet&#8217;s sacred mosque,&#8221; Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Mansour al-Turki told reporters on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Turki said the group was also behind a suicide bombing near the US consulate in Jeddah in 2016. Both attacks took place in July during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.<\/p>\n<p>The bombing outside Prophet Muhammad&#8217;s mosque in the western Saudi city of Medina killed four security officers, while two policemen were wounded in the attack in Jeddah.<\/p>\n<p>Turki said 32 of those arrested were Saudis, while the 14 others were from Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan and Jordan.<\/p>\n<p>The ministry previously identified the Medina bomber as a Saudi national and the Jeddah bomber as a Pakistani.<\/p>\n<p>There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks, nor did the Interior Ministry blame a specific group.<\/p>\n<p>In recent months, Saudi authorities have stepped up a nationwide clampdown on suspected attackers.<\/p>\n<p>Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), based in Iraq and Syria, has carried out a series of bombings and shootings in Saudi Arabia since mid-2014 killing scores of people, mostly members of the Shia-Muslim minority and security services.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-19698 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/3aa78f97d5e54c32a097263d22dc1a27_18.jpg\" alt=\"The Interior Ministry previously identified the Medina bomber as a Saudi national \" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Attacks took place in July during final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, killing four security officers.} Saudi Arabia has arrested 46 people suspected of belonging to a cell responsible for an attack in Medina outside of one of Islam&#8217;s holiest sites last year. &#8220;Investigations revealed they were directly involved in the crime [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-34277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34277"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=34277"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=34277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}