Kuwait’s Interior Ministry has identified the attacker who carried out the mosque bombing on 26 June as a Saudi citizen.

It has been reported by state media that the bombing, which killed 27 people and injured more than 200, was carried out by Fahd Abdulmohsen al-Qabaa, a Saudi national. The jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Al-Imam al-Sadeq mosque in the Sawber district of Kuwait.

By 29 June, the Kuwaiti authorities had arrested several people in connection with the attack, including the owner and driver of the vehicle used to transport the bomber to the mosque. The ministry said the bomber flew into Kuwait on 26 June, just hours before he carried out the attack.

Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah visited the mosque on 26 June, and Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah visited the wounded at the Emiri Hospital, according to local and international media reports.

The attack on the Al-Imam Al-Sadeq mosque is one of the first attacks of its kind in Kuwait. The country has one of the largest Shia populations in the GCC, but to date has not suffered as many sectarian incidents as Saudi Arabia or Bahrain.

The attack follows the bombing of a Shia mosque in neighbouring Saudi Arabia in late May, which killed at least four people. The Saudi branch of Isis, Wilayat Najd, claimed the attack. The bombing took place outside a Shia mosque in the village of Anoud in Damman in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia during Friday prayers.

The Kuwait mosque attack happened on the same day as a terrorist attack on a beach resort in Tunisia, which killed 38 people. Isis has claimed responsibility for this massacre as well.