- The capture of the Holy Mosques at Medina and Mecca is a key IS objective
- Security fence includes thermal imaging systems and battlefield radar
- Attack on border post last week said to be first IS attack on kingdom
Published:
21:30 GMT, 15 January 2015
|
Updated:
05:53 GMT, 16 January 2015
The Saudi royal family are building a 600-mile barrier to fortify the northern frontier of their kingdom.
The
fence and ditch, punctuated with radar surveillance towers, command
centres and guard posts, aims to protect the Saudis' oil-rich territory
from invasion by the Islamic State insurgency.
Last
week a suicide bombing and gun attack which killed two Saudi border
guards and their commanding officer was styled by one analyst as the
Islamic State's first attack on the kingdom.
Scroll down for video
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Defences: This multilayered fence and
ditch, punctuated with radar surveillance towers, command centres and
guard posts, aims to protect the Saudis' oil-rich territory from
invasion by the Islamic State insurgency
No
group claimed responsibility for the assault in a remote desert area,
but it happened just next to Iraq's Anbar province where Islamic State
militants are fighting Iraqi army forces.
Saudi
Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud inaugurated the first
phase of the border security project in September, soon after Islamic
State's Sunni insurgency swept across Iraq.
The
multi-layered barrier, which will eventually stretch across the
Saudi-Iraq border from Jordan to Kuwait, includes 78 monitoring towers,
eight command centres, 10 mobile surveillance vehicles, 32
rapid-response centres, and three rapid intervention squads, reports Janes.com.
Citing
a promotional video, the defence industry magazine reported the
six-mile-deep barrier consists of a ditch, two fences and a patrol road
connecting the watchtowers and guard rooms. The video included footage
of thermal imagers and battlefield radar systems that can detect
individuals at up to 12 miles away and vehicles at up to 24 miles away.
Islamic
State sees Saudi Arabia's links to the West as a betrayal of Islam and
has called for 'lone-wolf' attacks against Saudi security forces, the
Shi'ite Muslim minority and foreigners.
Saudi
forces have joined U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State positions
in Syria and mobilised conservative Sunni clergy to describe the
ideology of the al Qaeda offshoot as deviant.
Expansion
of the Islamic State could turn into an existential struggle for the
Saudi regime, which many hardline Islamists see as decadent and corrupt.
A
key goal of jihadists is the ultimate capture of Saudi Arabia, the
birthplace of Islam and home to the Two Holy Mosques of Mecca and
Medina.
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Tragic: A picture released by the
Saudi Press Agency shows a cleric and mourners praying in the holy
mosque in Mecca during the funeral of three Saudi guards killed in an
attack on the kingdom's border
Relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia have already been deeply strained.
Riyadh
has accused former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of creating the
conditions for the jihadist insurgency in his country by marginalising
its Sunni Arab minority.
Maliki in turn has accused the oil-rich kingdom of supporting 'terrorism' in Shi'ite-majority Iraq.
Three
of the four killed in last week's raid were Saudi nationals who local
media described as members of the 'deviant group', a phrase authorities
use to describe Al Qaeda.
Three more Saudi nationals and four Syrians have since been arrested in Saudi Arabia in connection with the attack.
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