A suicide bomber struck Thursday at a Saudi mosque used by security forces near the border with war-
battered Yemen, officials said, killing more than a dozen people.

The Islamic State asserted responsibility for the attack, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks online activities of militant groups. The blast follows a spate of suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia claimed by the Islamic State.

It also comes as Saudi Arabia and its allies have escalated their four-month-old war against rebel forces in Yemen.

The official Saudi Press Agency said that at least 10 security personnel and three workers were killed in the mosque blast, which occurred in the southern Asir region.

[In Yemen, many bombs but shrinking water supplies]

Earlier, the state-owned al-Ekhbariya news channel reported that 17 people were killed. The reason for the conflicting death tolls was not clear.

Fragments of a belt apparently packed with explosives were found at the site, according to the SPA report.

Saudi authorities have arrested hundreds of people in recent weeks on suspicion of links to the Islamic State, an enemy of the oil-rich kingdom’s Western-allied monarchy.

Saudi officials said the detentions have foiled several terrorism plots after two suicide bombings in May that targeted Shiite mosques in the eastern part of the country. The Islamic State asserted responsibility for those attacks, which killed more than two dozen people.

[Saudi-led coalition plans ground attacks in Yemen after taking key city]

Analysts say the Islamic State wants to foment sectarian unrest by targeting Saudi Arabia’s minority Shiite community. Saudi Arabia and the militant group espouse similarly conservative views of Sunni Islam, deeming Shiites as apostates, but Saudi officials permit Shiite worship and rites.

Analysts and Saudi officials say that many Saudis are drawn to the Islamic State’s puritanical interpretation of Islam and have joined the group’s ranks in Iraq and Syria.

Thursday’s bombing, however, did not bear much resemblance to the May attacks. The mosque in Asir is a Sunni one, although the Islamic State also opposes Saudi security personnel.

Witnesses posted pictures on Twitter purporting to show the aftermath of the attack, including charred carpeting in the mosque.

The attack comes after the start of ground operations in Yemen last month by the Saudi-led coalition, which began airstrikes against rebel forces there in late March. The rebels, known as Houthis, toppled the Saudi-backed government in February.

Yemeni forces allied with the embattled government and armed and trained by the coalition have captured the southern port city of Aden from the Houthis in recent days and advanced northward. An unspecified number of soldiers from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a coalition member, also are operating in southern Yemen, according to Yemeni fighters in Aden.

Meanwhile, Houthi rebels have fired mortar rounds and rockets across Yemen’s northern border into Saudi Arabia. The strikes have killed dozens of Saudi troops, according to rebels and analysts.

The Houthis and their allies have vowed to carry out more attacks on Saudi soil.

Saudi Arabia portrays the Houthis, who follow a branch of Shiite Islam, as tools of the kingdom’s main regional enemy, Iran. For its part, Iran, a Shiite nation, denies that it gives direct backing to the rebels, but it has denounced the Saudi-led attacks.

WP