Five people were killed and nine injured in a shooting on Monday night in a mostly Shia neighbourhood of eastern Saudi Arabia, police said, as the area prepared to observe Ashura.
The three assailants fired machine guns and pistols on a crowd leaving a building in the village of al Dalwah in the al Ahsa district of Eastern Province, a police spokesperson cited by the official SPA news agency said.
The spokesperson did not specify what the building was or what motive the gunmen might have had.
But in postings on social networking sites, residents said that the crowd had been leaving a Shia place of worship on the eve of Ashura.
Al Ahsa is one of the two main centers of minority Shias in Saudi Arabia, along with the district of Qatif.
Videos purporting to show the aftermath of the attack posted to social media showed a body lying in a pool of blood outside a building, with people milling around calling for help. The authenticity of the videos could not immediately be confirmed.
One of the videos showed a man holding spent bullet casings at the bloodstained entrance to what appears to be a Shi’ite place of worship.
Qatif and al Ahsa have historically been the focal point of anti-government demonstrations in support of Shias.
Shias say they face discrimination in seeking educational opportunities or government employment and that they are referred to disparagingly in text books and by some Sunni officials and state-funded clerics.
They also complain of restrictions on setting up places of worship and marking Shia holidays, and say that Qatif and al Ahsa receive less state funding than Sunni communities of equivalent size.
The Saudi government denies allegations of discrimination.
A government census in 2001 said there were about a million Saudi Shias. But US diplomats in a 2008 embassy cable released by WikiLeaks estimated they represent up to 12% of the total Saudi population, which now numbers 20 million.
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