BEIRUT, Lebanon — Kuwait has identified the man who carried out adeadly suicide attack in a Shiite mosque as a citizen of Saudi Arabia who arrived in the small Persian Gulf nation just hours before the bombing, the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
Kuwaiti authorities also arrested a local man who had driven the car that dropped the bomber off and the Kuwaiti owner of the house where the driver was hiding, the Interior Ministry said, adding that the house’s owner followed a “deviant ideology.”
The bombing on Friday occurred during the largest communal prayers of the week and killed 27 people and wounded more than 200 other
The Kuwait attack resembled recent bombings of Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia that have also been claimed by the so-called Najd Province of the Islamic State in statements posted online. Analysts say the attacks seek to heighten sectarian discord between Sunnis and Shiites in gulf nations.
The Islamic State’s hard-line Sunni ideology considers Shiites, who make up about one-third of Kuwait’s citizens, heretics.
The Kuwaiti Interior Ministry said the suspect was Fahd Suleiman Abdul-Mohsen al-Qabaa and that he had entered the country through the international airport in Kuwait City on Friday morning.
Kuwaiti authorities identified the driver as a member of the Bedoon population, descendants of nomads who live in Kuwait but are not citizens.
