Terrorism in Saudi Arabia has mainly been attributed to Islamic extremists. Their targets included foreign civilians—Westerners affiliated with its oil-based economy—as well as Saudi Arabian civilians and security forces. Anti-Western attacks have occurred in Saudi Arabia dating back to 1995. Saudi Arabia itself has been accused of funding terrorism in other countries, including Syria.
On 22 August 2014, Shia militants killed at least 73 people in an attack on the Sunni Musab bin Omair mosque in the Imam Wais village of Diyala Province, Iraq. The attack occurred during Jumu'ah and at the time of the attack, there were about 150 worshippers at the mosque. The attack took place during the Northern Iraq offensive by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against the Iraqi government. The attack was blamed on Shiite militias fighting alongside the Iraqi army against ISIL. In 2020 an Iraqi court found the militants to be not guilty.
The following lists events that happened during 2014 in Iraq.
The following lists events the happened in 2013 in Iraq.
The 2014 al-Dalwah attack occurred on 3 November 2014 at al-Dalwah village in the eastern province of al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia when three masked gunmen shot at a group of people, killing eight people and injuring nine others. The attack occurred on Ashura and is thought to be targeting Shi’ite Muslims. Six people were arrested and one suspect killed.
There has been an increase in incidents involving alleged radical Islamism in the Balkans since the 1990s.
The Qatif and Dammam mosque bombings occurred on 22 and 29 May 2015. On Friday May 22, a suicide bomber attacked the Shia "Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib Mosque" situated in Qudeih village of Qatif city in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blast, which killed at least 21 people. The event is the second deadly attack against Shia in six months.
The response of Saudi Arabia to the Islamic State has taken many forms. For example, Saudi government agencies have worked with the United States since late 2014 to train and equip Syrian fighters hoping to engage with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants. The challenges of dealing with ISIL is complicated by the fact that around 2,500 militants originally from Saudi territory have left for Syria in order to join ISIL, the destabilization created by the Syrian Civil War having a big effect on the region.
In July 2013, at the same time as mass protests began against the 3 July coup d'état which deposed Mohamed Morsi, and in parallel with the escalation of the already ongoing jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, pro-Muslim Brotherhood militants started violent attacks against policemen and soldiers in central and western Egypt. In the following months, new Islamist armed groups were created to reinstate Islamist rule in Egypt, like Soldiers of Egypt and the Popular Resistance Movement. Since 2013, violence in mainland Egypt has escalated and developed into a low-level Islamist insurgency against the Egyptian government.
The following lists events that will happen in 2016 in Yemen.
The 2017 Tehran attacks were a series of two simultaneous terrorist attacks that occurred on 7 June 2017 that were carried out by five terrorists belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against the Iranian Parliament building and the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, both in Tehran, Iran, leaving 17 civilians dead and 43 wounded. The shootings were the first terrorist attacks in Tehran in more than a decade, and the first major terror attack in the country since the 2010 Zahedan bombings.
The Qatif conflict is a modern phase of sectarian tensions and violence in Eastern Arabia between Arab Shia Muslims and Arab Sunni majority, which has ruled Saudi Arabia since early 20th century. The conflict encompasses civil unrest which has been sporadically happened since the 1979 uprising, pro-democracy and pro-human rights protests and occasional armed incidents, which increased in 2017 as part of the 2017–20 Qatif unrest.
On the morning of December 6, 2019, a terrorist attack occurred at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Pensacola, Florida. The assailant killed three men and injured eight others. The shooter was killed by Escambia County sheriff deputies after they arrived at the scene. He was identified as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, an Air Force aviation student from Saudi Arabia.
The Islamic State – Saudi Arabia Province, referred to by the Islamic State as its Province of the Two Holy Mosques and self-described as Najd Province, was a branch of the militant Islamist group Islamic State (IS), active in Saudi Arabia. The group, formed on 13 November 2014, conducted a number of attacks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between November 2014 and March 2017. The group was generally considered less active than other established affiliates of the Islamic State, notably the Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS–K). As of 2024 the group appears to be inactive.
ISIS