Kuwait City, Jun 29: Authorities on Sunday identified the suicide bomber behind an attack on a Shiite mosque that killed 27 people and injured 227 as a Saudi citizen who flew into the Gulf nation just hours before blowing himself up.
The Interior Ministry named the bomber as Fahad Suleiman Abdulmohsen Al-Gabbaa and said he was born in 1992, making him 22 or 23 years old.
It was not immediately known where Al-Gabbaa had arrived from, but the timing of his arrival suggests he had a network already in place in Kuwait. The ministry said it was searching for more partners and aides in this “despicable crime.”
The government-linked Al-Jarida newspaper reported that at least seven suspects have been detained in connection with the attack.
The ministry said the driver of the Japanese-made car, who left the mosque immediately after Friday's bombing, was an illegal resident named Abdul-Rahman Sabah Aidan, a Bidoon.
Authorities on Saturday arrested the car owner, Jarrah Nimr Mejbil Ghazi, born in 1988, and also listed as a stateless person.
Security services have also detained the owner of the house used as a hideout by the driver, describing the owner as a Kuwaiti national who subscribes to “extremist and deviant ideology”.
The ministry said authorities will “continue efforts to uncover the conspirators in this criminal act and to reveal all of the information and circumstances behind it.”
Mourners turned out in large numbers Saturday despite the Ramadan fast and as temperatures hit 45 degrees Celsius.
“We want to deliver a message to Daesh that we are united brothers among the Sunnis and Shiites, and they cannot divide us,” said Abdulfatah Al-Mutawwia, a Kuwaiti living in Iraq who lost his brother in the bombing.
Officials said the bombing was clearly meant to stir enmity between majority Sunnis and minority Shiites and harm the comparatively harmonious ties between the sects in Kuwait.
Kuwaitis reacted with outrage to the bombing. Some said citizens who fund armed groups fighting in Syria and Iraq were to blame for any militancy in Kuwait.
“The wrath of God will come upon Daesh and everyone who is supporting them and collecting funds for them under the cover of helping refugees and orphans,” wrote Hamad Al-Baghli, a Kuwaiti, on Twitter.
Abdulrahman Al-Jeeran, a parliamentarian, told Reuters lawmakers should stop “sectarian discourse” and be prevented from using sectarian issues for electoral gains.
Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah instructed authorities Sunday to repair the targeted mosque.
Local media said 18 of those killed were Kuwaitis, three Iranians, two Indians, one each from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and one Bidoon.
The bodies of the eight victims were flown to Iraq's city of Najaf for burial.
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