Saudi ruler orders steps against threat of ‘terrorism’

Reuters/Riyadh

King Abdullah has ordered all necessary measures to protect Saudi Arabia against potential “terrorist threats” after chairing a security meeting to discuss the fall-out from Iraq, the state news agency SPA said yesterday.

The world’s top oil exporter shares an 800km border with Iraq, where the militant Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other Sunni Muslim groups have seized towns and cities in a lightning advance this month.

Riyadh has long expressed fears of being targeted by jihadists, including some of its own citizens, who have taken part in conflicts in Iraq and Syria, and earlier this year decreed long jail terms for those who travel overseas to fight.

“Concerned for the national security of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia against any measures that terrorist organisations or any other groups might resort to ... (the king) has ordered all necessary measures to protect the gains of the homeland and its stability, and the security of the Saudi people,” SPA said.

King Abdullah acted a day before he is due to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jeddah to discuss the crisis in Iraq and Syria, and a day after two Saudi men were involved in a suicide bombing in Lebanon.

Sunni Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest supporters of mainly Sunni rebels in Lebanon’s neighbour Syria fighting against President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Riyadh’s main regional adversary, Shia Muslim Iran.

However, it has shied away from arming rebel groups like ISIL that it fears are connected to Al Qaeda, which waged a campaign of attacks inside the kingdom a decade ago led by veterans of jihad in civil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.