Saudi Arabia has claimed to have foiled an Isis plot to attack seven mosques across the kingdom after it arrested 431 "plotters", the country's interior ministry announced on Saturday.
The mosques located in capital Riyadh as well as the Eastern Province were to be targeted by Isis suicide bombers, Al Arabiya reported, citing interior ministry spokesman Maj Gen Mansour Al Turki.
Most of the arrested are Saudi nationals, while the others hail from nine different countries. The ministry said the arrests were made over the "past few weeks".
In its statement to the official state news agency, the interior ministry said the arrested men were also accused of carrying out several terror attacks, including the two suicide bombings that targeted Muslim Shiite minority mosques in May and killed 25 people.
The arrested also stand accused of an Isis-claimed suicide attack in May that killed 21 people in the village of al-Qudeeh, in the oil-rich eastern Qatif region. The spat of bombings in May was the deadliest terror attack that Saudi Arabia has witnessed in over a decade.
Authorities said the suspects had set up a training camp in the southern desert of Sharoura where the arrested terror cell members were being trained in bombing making. Investigations have also found that a group of members was that of trained suicide bombers, who were assigned the task of carrying out attacks on mosques in the kingdom.
In the raid the police also found a weapons manufacturing unit at one suspect Ali Mohammad Al-Ateeq's house, the authorities said.
The officials said that 144 suspects were part of the terror cell's online media group responsible for recruiting members and spreading its propaganda on Twitter and Facebook, according to The Wall Street Journal.
