(REUTERS) A suicide bomber killed 25 people when he blew himself up inside a packed Shi’ite Muslim mosque in Kuwait city during Friday prayers, the interior ministry said, the first attack of its kind in the major oil-exporting country.
The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded 202 people according to the interior ministry, in the district of Sawaber in the eastern part of the Kuwaiti capital.
Parliament member Khalil al-Salih, who was at the mosque when the attack occurred, said worshippers were kneeling in prayer when the bomber walked into the Imam al-Sadeq Mosque and detonated his explosives, destroying walls and the ceiling.
“The explosion was really hard. The ceiling and wall got destroyed,” he said, adding that more than 2,000 people from the Shi’ite Ja’afari sect were praying at the mosque.
Security forces quickly sealed off the perimeter of the mosque while rescue workers carried the wounded to hospital.
Islamic State named the bomber as Abu Suleiman al-Muwahed and said in a statement posted on social media that he had targeted a “temple of the rejectionists” — a term it generally uses to refer to Shi’ites, whom it regards as heretics.
Shi’ites comprise between 15 and 30 percent of the predominantly Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab state, where members of both communities are known to live side by side with little apparent friction.
Islamic State had urged its followers on Tuesday to step up attacks during the Ramadan fasting month against Christians, Shi’ites and Sunni Muslims fighting with a U.S.-led coalition against the ultra-hardline jihadist group.
