Those responsible for Saudi Arabia's latest suicide attack will be "burned in hell," the kingdom's top cleric said Thursday, as investigators searched for clues to the deadly bombing.
| "They'll fry like oysters! They'll be incinerated like marshmallows at a Cub Scout outing!" |
Five people, including two senior police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed along with the suicide bomber in Wednesday's attack on the administrative building of the General Security, the Interior Ministry said. It said 148 people were injured. A shadowy Islamic extremist group, the purportedly al-Qaida inspired al-Haramin Brigades, released a statement on at least two Islamic Web sites claiming responsibility for the attack. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified. Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, the kingdom's highest religious authority, condemned the attack "as one of the greatest sins."
"God revealed the criminality of this wayward group, which harms Islam and the nation," he said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. "Whoever kills an (Islamic) believer on purpose will be punished by being burned in hell, punished by God's anger and will be cursed and suffer great pain." Saudi officials said the bombing bore the hallmark of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, which was blamed for suicide attacks in May and November 2003 in Riyadh that killed 51 people. Saudi Arabia cracked down hard on militants after those attacks. |