Above is a picture of two brave young men taken just hours before they were killed this afternoon, having stopped an ISIS suicide bomber from entering the Imam Hussain mosque in Saudi Arabia. A much higher death toll was avoided thanks to the two young civilians, who stopped the man from entering the mosque in Dammam.
Witnesses told local press the man was wearing a woman’s abaya and tried to enter the Mosque by the female entrance but it was shut. He was barred from entering by Mohammed Hassan Ali bin Isa and Saeed Abdel Jaleel Jumaa al-Arbash, the two young men, who had been tasked with manning a civilian checkpoint.
Unable to enter the mosque, the terrorist detonated his bomb around five metres outside the entrance, killing himself and the two young men as well as one other person whose identity has yet to be discovered.
Dramatic footage from inside the mosque at the exact moment the bomb exploded was posted to Twitter,
Dramatic footage from inside Shia mosque shows the moment bomb exploded outside. #DammamAttack #ShiaGenocide pic.twitter.com/FBPnSf0cqz
— Digital Resistance (@dgtlresistance) May 29, 2015
Mohammed’s mother is a high-profile writer for Al-Jazira and the news of her son’s death was met with a huge outpouring of support.
“They saved a lot of lives by stopping the bomber from getting inside the mosque. They are both heroes.”
A local resident, speaking to Middle East Eye
This is the second bomb to hit Saudi Arabia’s Shiite-majority Eastern Province in a week after a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a mosque, killing 21 and injuring 100 others in another Islamic State attack last Friday.