by Our Foreign Desk

A SUICIDE bomber who killed 27 people at a crowded Shi’ite mosque was identified yesterday as a Saudi man who flew into Kuwait just hours before committing the atrocity.

Fahad Suleiman Abdulmohsen al-Gabbaa, possibly just 22 years old, targeted worshippers at the Imam Sadiq mosque — one of Kuwait’s oldest — as they attended midday prayers on Friday.

The Interior Ministry said that Mr Gabbaa arrived on a flight to Kuwait International Airport at dawn on Friday.

An affiliate of Islamic State (Isis) has claimed responsibility and police have begun to round up people thought to be connected with the bombing, which also injured 227 people.

Authorities said they arrested a 25-year-old from Kuwait’s bidoon community, Abdulrahman Sabah Eidan Saud, who they say drove Mr Gabbaa to the mosque.

The bidoon community is made up of descendants of desert nomads and others considered stateless by the government.

They say that the government deprives them of citizenship and rights.A Kuwaiti man who housed the driver was also arrested. The Interior Ministry described him as a follower of a “fundamentalist and deviant ideology.”

The government-linked al-Jarida newspaper reported that at least seven suspects had been picked up.

A local Isis affiliate calling itself the Najd Province said it was behind the bombing. Isis considers Shi’ites, who make up a third of Kuwait’s population of 1.2 million, to be heretics.