RIYADH: The Saudi Arab security forces arrested suspected Al-Qaeda operatives, who forged terrorist plan on the occasion of Hajj, the interior ministry said on Friday.
"The authorities have arrested a group which planned to carry out a terrorist act aimed at harming security and damaging the (hajj) pilgrimage," General Mansur al-Turqi, a ministry spokesman was quoted as saying.
The spokesman said the attack planned by a "deviant group", the Saudi term for militants linked to Al-Qaeda, did not however target Islam’s holiest sites in Makkah or the pilgrims.
Earlier, a Dubai-based television said Saudi authorities arrested an Al-Qaeda linked group planning to carry out attacks during the hajj, quoting Saudi security officials.
The Saudi sources said the arrests were made in several different cities of the oil-rich kingdom.
"The group aimed to trouble the security of the pilgrimage" which has this week attracted almost 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims from around the world to Islam’s holiest sites in western Saudi Arabia, the television report said.
Members of the group, whose number was unknown, were arrested "three days before the start of the hajj season", or at the end of last week, the sources said while talking to the Dubai based news TV.
The reports emerged as the hajj was winding down on Friday.
The authorities were on high alert this year because of the participation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the first president from the Islamic republic to take part in the hajj.
Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said in early December that his forces had foiled "more than 180 terrorist operations" since a wave of bombings and shootings by the Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda broke out four years ago.
There were no major incidents reported during this year’s hajj.
According to official Saudi figures, a total of 2,454,325 pilgrims from 181 nations, 1,707,814 of them from outside the Gulf state, performed this year’s pilgrimage.
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