Saudi Arabia Riyadh announced on 4 September that authorities had seized a lorry-load of surface-to-air missiles. The weapons, said to be heading for an unnamed terrorist group, were captured in late August near Jeddah, and were believed to have been smuggled from Yemen. News of the seizure came during a visit by Foreign Affairs Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal to Russia.

The visit was intended to open a ‘new page in bilateral relations’ between the two states and encourage co-operation in fighting terrorism. In a statement on 3 September from Prince Saud, it was announced that a group would be established to ‘study anti-terrorism issues and develop efficient measures to fight it’. The meetings between Saudi Arabia and Russia are the first direct government talks between the two countries since the fall of the Soviet Union.