Published Monday, January 5, 2015

Attackers killed two Saudi border guards including a senior officer and injured a third on the kingdom's frontier with Iraq in a rare shooting and suicide assault early on Monday, the Saudi interior ministry said.

Saudi Arabia's border with Iraq, which is heavily defended by a series of earth berms and fences and closely monitored by camera and radar, has been attacked in the past by mortar bombs fired from a distance, but more targeted attacks are rare.

The unidentified attackers shot at a border patrol near Arar and when security officers responded, one of the attackers was captured and detonated an explosives belt, the ministry said in a brief statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

One of those killed was a senior officer, Major General Mansour Turki, the ministry's spokesman, told Reuters. Turki did not give his name. The officer was named by local media, including Sabq news website, as General Oudah al-Belawi.

Saudi Arabia boosted its security on the frontier in July, adding thousands of troops to back up a border guards force, after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group seized swathes of territory in Iraq including Anbar province on the kingdom's border.

Saudi forces have joined the so-called US-led air strikes against ISIS positions in Syria, and the group has called for "lone-wolf" attacks by sympathizers in the country against its Shia Muslim minority and foreigners.

Critics opposed to US involvement in the conflict with the jihadist militants have pointed out that Washington in partnership with its Gulf allies, especially Saudi Arabia, played a role in the formation and expansion of extremist groups like ISIS by arming, financing and politically empowering rebels in Syria and Libya.

A recent study by the London-based small-arms research organization Conflict Armament Research revealed that ISIS jihadists appear to be using US military-issued arms and weapons supplied to the “moderate” rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia.

The report said the jihadists disposed of "significant quantities" of US-made small arms including M-16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings "Property of US Govt."

It also found that anti-tank rockets used by ISIS in Syria were "identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the Free Syrian Army umbrella in 2013."

The kingdom is home to Islam's holiest sites and practices a strict version of Sunni Islam.

Its Interior Ministry told Reuters in November it had identified at least 2,000 Saudis who had gone to fight in Syria and Iraq, but that 600 of them had returned to the kingdom and were in detention and others had died.

(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

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