Suicide Bomber Kills 15 in Attack on a Saudi Arabian Mosque

ISTANBUL — A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people Thursday, including 12 members of a Saudi police force, when he detonated explosives in a mosque in southern Saudi Arabia, the state news agency there reported.

The bombing was the deadliest attack in recent years on Saudi Arabia’s police forces, and the most recent in a series of attacks on mosques in the kingdom.

Most of the recent attacks have targeted mosques used by the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia; the Islamic State, which considers Shiites heretics, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency said the attack Thursday was at a mosque belonging to a local security force in the region of Asir, in southwestern Saudi Arabia.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulated on social media, saying the bomber had used an explosives belt to blow up “a monument of apostasy” that supported the Saudi state and its “crusader masters.”

While Saudi Arabia promotes a conservative interpretation of Islam similar to that of the Islamic State, clerics in the country have denounced the group as misguided and bloodthirsty. Saudi Arabia has joined the U.S.-led coalition that is waging an air campaign against the group in Iraq and Syria.

But the Islamic State movement has found support in some parts of Saudi society, and thousands of Saudis have traveled abroad to join the jihadis.

Leaders of the Islamic State consider Saudi Arabia a heretical state and have called on supporters to carry out attacks inside the kingdom and elsewhere.

Islamic State militants have also carried out smaller attacks on Saudi security forces, which the militant group sees as propping up the Saudi monarchy.