Saudi police kills fugitive ISIL suspect
Interior ministry says Yousif al-Ghamdi, 32, fled during Friday’s raid on suspected ISIL affiliates in Taif city.
A Saudi fugitive has been killed in a shootout with police after escaping a raid on suspected extremists, the interior ministry has said.
The incident came a day after a policeman was shot dead on Friday during a raid in the eastern city of Taif in which three people suspected of belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group were arrested.
The operation was launched to detain Yousif Abdulatif Shabab al-Ghamdi, 32, who escaped, but he was later tracked down in Taif by police and killed in a shootout in a home, according to the ministry.
It did not specify when Ghamdi died but said he opened fire with an automatic weapon and a pistol prompting police to shoot, it said, quoted by the Saudi Press Agency.
According to the ministry, Ghamdi had not travelled outside the kingdom and had been jailed in the past for six years on criminal charges.
Friday’s raid came with Gulf states on alert against attacks by ISIL, which has been blamed for deadly attacks on Saudi policemen and Shia mosque bombings in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
An ISIL-affiliated group in Saudi Arabia, calling itself Najd Province, claimed the suicide bombings in May and June at mosques of the minority Shia community.
The kingdom had announced a list of 16 people last month it said were involved in both bombings and offered a cash reward of about $1.3m for information leading to their arrest.
Gulf interior ministers on Friday held an emergency meeting in Kuwait and called for coordination to confront “this serious epidemic”.