Riyadh: Saudi Arabian police shot dead a wanted suspected militant early on Tuesday after he killed his own father who had reported him to the authorities, the Interior Ministry said in a statement carried on state media.
“At 1am on Tuesday (2300 GMT on Monday), while security men were taking measures to apprehend a security fugitive, accompanied by the man’s father, he left his house and fired with an automatic weapon, killing his father and wounding two security men,” it said.
The security forces fired back, killing the man, according to the statement, which said that the authorities were investigating the incident but gave no further details.
The kingdom is facing a wave of militancy, officials there say, from some hardline Islamists who have sworn allegiance to Daesh, the group waging wars in Iraq and Syria.
This year a Saudi militant cell affiliated with Daesh carried out two bombings of Shiite mosques, killing 25, and sympathisers also shot dead three policemen and wounded another in a series of attacks in Riyadh.
Sabq.org, a news website affiliated with the Saudi government, said the incident took place in the southern city of Khamis Mushait.
The Saudi authorities have detained hundreds of suspected militants over the past year, including people who planned attacks inside the country and others who sought to travel to Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Afghanistan to fight.
In the southwestern city of Taif on July 3, a policeman was gunned down during a raid in which three people were arrested and flags of Daesh extremists found, police said earlier.
Saudi Arabia released a list of 16 men suspected of involvement in a pair of May suicide bombings at mosques in the Eastern Province, home to most of the kingdom’s Shiite community.
