(MENAFN- The Peninsula) From a mass shooting at a Tunisian beach resort, a suicide bomber targeting a mosque in Kuwait and a decapitated body in a French town, a wave of grisly attacks yesterday claimed at least 64 lives and injured over 250, shocking the world days after the Islamic State (IS) urged supporters to carry out Ramadan attacks.
There was no apparent link between the attacks, but IS claimed the suicide bombing at the Shia mosque in Kuwait in which 27 people were killed, and Islamist flags found at the site of the French attack.
The suicide bomber blew himself up in the packed mosque in Kuwait city during Friday prayers, the health ministry and witnesses said, the first suicide bombing at a Shia mosque and worst militant attack in the country for many years.
Shias comprise between 15 and 30 percent of the predominantly Sunni state, where members of both communities are known to live side by side with little apparent friction. The IS, which on Monday marks the first anniversary of its "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded 227 people according to the interior ministry, in the district of Sawaber in the eastern part of the Kuwaiti capital.
MP Khalil Al Salih, who was at the mosque when the attack occurred, said worshippers were kneeling in prayer when the bomber walked into Imam Al Sadeq Mosque and detonated his explosives, destroying walls and the ceiling.
"It was obvious from the suicide bomber's body that he was young. He walked into the prayer hall during sujood (kneeling in prayer). He looked ...in his 20s, I saw him," he said by telephone.
"The explosion was hard. The ceiling and wall got destroyed," he said, adding over 2,000 people from the Shia Ja'afari sect were praying. The mosque preacher was quoted by state news agency KUNA as saying the attack targeted worshippers at the back of the mosque towards the end of the prayer.
Security forces sealed off the perimeter of the mosque while rescue workers carried the wounded to hospital.
IS named the bomber Abu Suleiman Al Muwahed and said in a statement on social media that he had targeted a "temple of the rejectionists" - a term it generally uses to refer to Shias whom it regards as heretics.
On Tuesday, IS had urged followers to step up attacks during Ramadan against Christians, Shias and Sunnis fighting with a US-led coalition against the ultra-hardline jihadist group.
The health ministry said Kuwait's blood bank had opened additional centres to receive donations and urged citizens with non-urgent medical needs to avoid emergency units.
Kuwait declared a day of mourning today. Emir H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah visited the mosque and said the bombing violated the sanctity of Ramadan and Islamic law forbidding the shedding of the blood of innocents. "National unity is a protective fence for the security of the nation," he said.
Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al Mubarak Al Sabah visited the wounded at Emiri Hospital and condemned the bombing as an attempt to jeopardise Kuwait's national unity.
Minister of Justice, Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs Yaqoub Al Sanea said that despite the attack, "Kuwait will remain an oasis of security for all groups of Kuwaiti society and all sects. The government is taking procedures to protect prayers and mosques".
In Tunisia, a man pulled a gun hidden inside a beach umbrella and opened fire at the packed Mediterranean resort of Port el Kantaoui, massacring 37 people and wounding 36 in the country's worst attack in recent history.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Witnesses described scenes of panic after the shooting at the five-star Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel on the outskirts of Sousse, about 140km south of Tunis.
"There are 37 dead and 36 wounded. Some of the wounded are in a critical condition," health ministry communications chief Chokri Nafti said. Interior ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said: "The assailant was killed."
A spokesman for Spain's RIU group said most of 565 guests were from Britain and "central European countries". British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said in London five Britons had been killed and warned that the toll could rise.
In Dublin, Foreign Minister Charles Flanagan said an Irish woman was among the dead.
Secretary of State for Security Rafik Chelly told Mosaique FM that the gunman was a Tunisian student unknown to authorities. "He entered by the beach, dressed like someone who was going to swim, and had a beach umbrella with his gun in it. When he came to the beach he used his weapon."
In Saint-Quentin Fallavier in France, a delivery man with known Islamist connections beheaded his boss and left the body, daubed with Arabic writing, at the site of a US-owned gas factory in the southeast before trying to blow up the complex.
He rammed his delivery van into a warehouse containing gas canisters, triggering an initial explosion, and was arrested minutes later as he tried to open canisters containing flammable chemicals, prosecutors said.
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