RIYADH: Unidentified gunmen killed two Saudi policemen in the mainly Shia eastern city of Dammam early on Tuesday, authorities in the region said.

The officers came under “heavy fire from an unknown source” as they parked their vehicle in a commercial area, the official SPA news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.

The spokesman did not say who police suspected had carried out the shooting, the latest in a series of attacks on officers in Shia areas of the oil-rich east of the kingdom.

Two policemen were killed in a similar attack in Dammam last month.

The Shia minority in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia has long complained of discrimination and there has been sporadic unrest since the suppression of a Shia-led uprising in neighbouring Bahrain sparked a wave of protests in 2011.

Saudi security forces have also come under attack by Sunni extremists linked to Al Qaeda or the militant Islamic State group.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2016