RIYADH — (CNN) An explosion ripped through a mosque belonging to special emergency forces in southwestern Saudi Arabia on Thursday, killing at least 13 people and injuring nine others, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported.
A suicide bomber is believed to have caused the blast in the mosque inside an emergency force headquarters building in the kingdom’s Asir region, the SPA reported, citing an Interior Ministry spokesman.
Officers were participating in noon prayers in the mosque when the blast happened. Ten of the 13 killed were emergency force members; the rest were others who worked at the site, SPA reported.
The kingdom’s special emergency force, answering to the Interior Ministry, comprises quick-response security officers used for a variety of situations, including rescues, riot control and other police actions.
No claim of responsibility was immediately made.
The Asir region includes a small portion of the kingdom’s border with Yemen.
Saudi Arabia has launched numerous airstrikes in Yemen this year in support of Yemen’s deposed president, targeting Houthi rebels who took over Yemen’s capital.
Thursday’s blast comes more than two months after deadly suicide bombings at two Shiite Muslim mosques in Saudi Arabia — both attacks claimed by the Sunni terror group ISIS.
On May 22, a suicide bomber detonated himself, killing 21 people, at the Imam Ali mosque in the Persian Gulf-area village of Qudayh, in one of Saudi Arabia’s few Shiite population centers in the majority Sunni kingdom.
A week later, a man disguised as a woman blew himself up — killing three people — outside a mosque in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Damman, the capital of Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province.
In July, Saudi Arabia’s government said it had arrested 431 people with alleged ISIS ties, some of whom the kingdom alleged were involved in the May bombings.
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