Daesh claims car bomb blast in Saudi capital

DUBAI — An explosion damaged a car in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported, an incident the Daesh terror group said was caused by a bomb one of its members had affixed to the vehicle.

Saudi Arabia in 2014 declared Daesh a terrorist organisation and has detained hundreds of its supporters. The group, which controls territory in Iraq and Syria, has staged a series of attacks in the kingdom.

A police spokesman said a citizen had reported that his car had been damaged by a blast on Monday while parked in front of his house in the city's Al Azizia district, according to SPA. There were no injuries. Some nearby vehicles also were damaged.

In a statement released on the Telegram social messaging platform, Daesh’s Amaq news agency said the blast was caused by a “sticky bomb” attached to the vehicle of a member of the Saudi armed forces, the SITE monitoring service reported.

A Saudi interior ministry spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

On January 29 an attack at a Shiite Muslim mosque in Al Ehsa district in Eastern Province killed four people and injured 18. It was among a string of attacks claimed by the extremists that killed around 50 Saudis in the past year.