Blast injures many at ceremony
SEVERAL people were wounded yesterday when an explosive device hit an international ceremony commemorating the end of World War I at a cemetery in the Saudi city of Jeddah, according to French government officials.
Several countries had representatives at the ceremony, held at a cemetery for non-Muslim dead, the officials from the French Foreign Ministry said. The identities of the victims were unclear.
Yesterday’s attack follows a stabbing on October 29 that wounded a guard at the French Consulate in Jeddah. The stabbing was carried out by a Saudi man, who was arrested. His motives remain unclear.
France has suffered two deadly attacks by foreign-born Muslims in the past month.
A teacher was beheaded outside Paris for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class during a debate on free expression, and three people were later killed in a church in the southern city of Nice.
The depictions of Muhammad sparked protests and calls for boycotts of French products among some Muslims in the Middle East and South Asia. France has urged its citizens in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim-majority countries to be “on maximum alert” amid the heightened tensions.
Yesterday marked the 102nd anniversary of the armistice ending World War I, and was commemorated in several European countries. The French officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, condemned the attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion.
Jeddah saw its Ottoman troops surrender to local troops backed by the British in 1916 amid the war. That sparked the start of the Kingdom of Hejaz, which later became part of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
Jeddah’s Non-Muslim Cemetery sits near this Red Sea port city’s docks, hidden behind trees alongside a major city thoroughfare.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission shows just one soldier buried at the cemetery, Private John Arthur Hogan, who died in June 1944.
Across France, which was devastated by years of trench warfare in World War I, ceremonies yesterday marked the armistice anniversary and honoured all who died for France.