Saudi Arabia Arrests 431 Islamic State Suspects

Saudi Arabia said it has arrested 431 suspected Islamic State terrorists and thwarted six suicide attacks by militants.

The country's interior ministry said mosques, members of the security forces and a diplomatic mission were all being targeted by the group in recent weeks.

"The number arrested to date is 431, most of them citizens, in addition to participants from other nationalities... six successive suicide operations which targeted mosques in the Eastern province on every Friday timed with assassinations of security men were thwarted," the statement posted by the official news agency SPA said.

The statement added: "Terrorist plots to target a diplomatic mission, security and government facilities in Sharurah province and the assassination of security men were thwarted."

The Saudi authorities also accused some of those arrested of conducting several attacks, including a suicide bombing claimed by IS in May, which killed 21 people in the village of al Qudeeh.

They also said the suspects were behind the November shooting of eight worshippers in the eastern Saudi Arabian village of al Ahsa.

The statement also claimed authorities had arrested those responsible for an attack in late May, when a suicide bomber disguised as a woman blew himself up in the car park of a Shia mosque during Friday prayers, killing four people.

Those arrested were also behind a number of militant websites used in recruiting, the ministry said.

Saudi Arabia branded the Islamic State group a terrorist organisation last year and has joined the US-led coalition targeting it in Syria and Iraq.

The announcement came a day after an attack by the Islamic State group on a crowded marketplace in Iraq's eastern Diyala province killed 115 people , including women and children, in one of the deadliest single attacks in the country in the past decade.