RIYADH, Dec 23: Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday the arrest of 28 Al Qaeda linked suspects for planning attacks in the country, following an alleged plot to commit a “terrorist act” during the Haj.

“Since Dec 14, 28 members of the deviant group have been arrested, including one foreign resident and the rest Saudi nationals,” an interior ministry official said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

The statement said the suspects were “linked to elements abroad and were planning criminal acts in the kingdom”.

The suspects were captured in Makkah, Medina, Riyadh and the area around the kingdom’s northern borders, the statement said.

It added that it was in the “general interest” to withhold further details of the nature of the plots and the planned targets.

It said the arrests had not been announced earlier to avoid creating panic among the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Islam’s holiest sites in and around around Mecca in western Saudi Arabia.—AFP