Saudi police kill suspected Daesh militant

Saudi security forces killed a suspected Daesh militant when he pulled a gun on officers in the capital Riyadh, the Interior Ministry said today.

The patrol was trying to check a complaint yesterday evening that a resident of a flat in the capital’s Al-Rayyan district had joined Daesh.

“When security men tried to arrest him, he initiated resistance and pulled a gun and it became necessary to deal with him and neutralise him, which led to his death,” the ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

A companion of the dead man was arrested and found to be in possession of a weapon, it said.

The hardline group has carried out a series of bombings and shootings in Saudi Arabia since mid-2014 that has killed scores of people.

In a separate incident, a policeman was shot and killed by unidentified assailants in Tarout Island in eastern Saudi Arabia, according to another interior ministry statement.