Originally posted on The Guardian, November 11, 2020
Several people have been wounded in an explosion in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah during a ceremony to commemorate the end of the first world war attended by staff from foreign diplomatic missions, officials have said.
“The embassies involved condemn this cowardly attack, which is wholly unjustified,” the French foreign ministry said. “They call on the Saudi authorities to shed as much light as they can on this attack, and to identify and hunt down the perpetrators.”
A Greek government official told Reuters that an explosive device had gone off at a ceremony at a non-Muslim cemetery in Jeddah. Four people had been slightly injured, the official said, including a Greek national.
A statement from the Mecca governorate on Saudi state TV said two people were injured: a Greek consulate employee and a Saudi security guard. The British government said one UK national suffered minor injuries.
The Remembrance Day event was reportedly organised by the French embassy in Saudi Arabia for several diplomatic delegations from the EU and from other countries. Saudi officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
There was an attack at the French consulate in Jeddah last month in which a Saudi man was arrested after a security guard was wounded. The consulate urged French nationals in the city on Wednesday to exercise maximum vigilance.
“In particular, exercise discretion, and stay away from all gatherings and be cautious when moving around,” said the statement, circulated to French residents. It said only two people had been injured in the blast.
Saudi state TV said the site of the cemetery had been secured and police were investigating the explosion. Traffic had returned to normal in the area, it said.
Tensions between France and many Muslim-majority countries have been heightened following the beheading near Paris of a French junior high school teacher after he showed caricatures of the prophet Muhammad to pupils in a class on free speech.
Citing his country’s commitment to free speech, strict secular traditions and right to blasphemy, President Emmanuel Macron promised France would not “renounce caricatures” in the wake of the attack, angering many in the Muslim world who view the cartoons as extremely offensive.
There were angry protests in several countries, some burning Macron’s effigy, while in others supermarkets boycotted French products. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Macron should have “his mental health tested”.
The French president sought to calm the anger in an interview with the al-Jazeera news channel in which he said he understood that Muslims were “shocked” by the depictions of Muhammad, which he said did not reflect the state’s views.
Saudi Arabia, which is home to Islam’s holiest sites, has criticised the cartoons, but senior clerics have also called for calm and urged people to follow the prophet’s example of “mercy, justice, tolerance”.
The Saudi government also said it “strongly condemned” a second fatal Islamist attack in France last month in which two women worshippers and a church sexton were killed at the Notre Dame basilica in Nice.
On Tuesday, the French president hosted a summit of European leaders to plan a joint approach to combating what he calls “Islamist radicalism” after four people were killed in a shooting rampage in the heart of Vienna last week.
Link to the original post: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/several-injured-explosion-armistice-day-ceremony-jeddah-saudi-arabia
