RIYADH: Suicide bombers struck three cities across Saudi Arabia on Monday, in an apparently coordinated campaign of attacks as Saudis prepared to break their fast on the penultimate day of Ramazan.

The explosions targeting the security headquarters of the Mosque of the Prophet (peace be upon him) in Madina, Shia worshippers and US diplomats follow days of mass killings claimed by the militant Islamic State group in Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq.

A Saudi security official said an attacker parked a car near the US consulate in Jeddah before detonating the device.

In the only one of the three attacks that appeared to have caused many casualties, a suicide bomber detonated a device near the security headquarters of the mosque in Madina, the second-holiest site in Islam.

Bombers also strike in Jeddah, Qatif

Al Jazeera television said that the blast near Masjid-i-Nabawi left four people dead.

A video sent by a witness in the aftermath of the Madina bombing showed a large blaze among parked cars in the fading evening light, with a sound of sirens in the background. A picture sent to Reuters showed a burnt and bleeding man lying on a stretcher in a hospital.

Other pictures circulating on social media showed dark smoke billowing from flames near the Mosque of the Prophet (peace be upon him), which houses his grave and those of the first two caliphs.

In Qatif, an eastern city that is home to many members of the Shia minority, at least one and possibly two explosions struck near a Shia mosque.

A resident said there were believed to be no casualties there apart from the attacker as worshippers had already gone home to break their fast.

Civil defence forces were cleaning up the area and police were investigating, the resident said.

A video circulating on social media and purporting to show the aftermath of the Qatif blast showed an agitated crowd on a street, with a fire raging near a building.

Witnesses reported seeing body parts lying on the ground in the city’s business district.

“Suicide bomber for sure. I can see the body” which was blasted to pieces, a resident told AFP.

Nasima al-Sada, another resident, said, “one bomber blew himself up near the mosque”.

“We are in the last 10 days of Ramazan and those places are crowded because of that for prayers,” Khaled Batarfi, a Saudi Gazette columnist, told Al Jazeera.

Hours earlier a suicide bomber was killed and two people were wounded in a blast near the US consulate in Jeddah. The US Embassy in Saudi Arabia confirmed there were no casualties or injuries among the consular staff.

The Jeddah blast was the first bombing in years to attempt to target foreigners in the kingdom.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

IS has carried out a series of bombing and shooting attacks in Saudi Arabia since mid-2014 that have killed scores of people, mostly Shias and security personnel.

In January this year, at least four people were killed in a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in the eastern al-Ahsa region of Saudi Arabia.

In late October of 2015, the IS claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Najran city, in which at least one person was killed.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2016