Saudi police said armed “troublemakers” torched a bus Tuesday in Eastern Province, which was home to Nimr al-Nimr, the prominent Shiite cleric whose execution sparked a regional crisis with Iran. After the severing of tied, Iran begins terrorizing Eastern Saudi Arabia.
A police spokesman in the Shiite-majority province in the mainly Sunni Gulf kingdom said there were no casualties in the incident.
Cited by the official SPA news agency, he said four armed “troublemakers” intercepted the vehicle transporting workers in Qatif and set fire to it at gunpoint.
Social media sites said the bus belonged to the Saudi oil firm Aramco.
It was the second such incident in the oil-rich province since Saturday’s execution of Nimr for “terrorism.”
Late Sunday, police came under “heavy fire” that killed one person in Nimr’s home village.
A virulent critic of the Saudi regime, Nimr was venerated in the kingdom’s Eastern Province.
His execution led to Shiite protests in several Muslim countries and attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Riyadh’s regional rival Tehran.
On Sunday Saudi Arabia broke off relations with Iran, and Bahrain and Sudan followed suit. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait downgraded their diplomatic ties with the Islamic republic.
AFP contributed to this article.
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