Saudi Arabia has announced that it has foiled a number of attempts to launch attacks inside the kingdom and has arrested 149 people with alleged links to al-Qaeda over the past eight months, Press TV reported.
The alleged militants, including both Saudi and foreign nationals, were conducting operations mainly in Yemen, but also in Afghanistan and Somalia, Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki told reporters on Friday.
Of those detained, 25 of them are foreigners, while the rest are Saudis, he said.
He added that those arrested were planning to target Saudi government and security officials via 19 al-Qaeda linked cells. Around $600,000 has been confiscated from them, supposedly to be used to support al-Qaeda, both inside and outside the country.
They were raising money and recruiting members to carry out attacks inside the kingdom, he said.
Turki did not furnish any details about the cells' activities but said that most of the plots were against Saudi security and political officials, journalists, and resident "non-Muslim foreigners" or "Westerners."
One cell was apparently training people in the use of electronic bombs, possibly car bombs, while another was raising money for al-Qaeda abroad, while another group was planning to seize weapons from a government security department, Ynet reported.
Turki said he could not say if they had planned to attack key economic installations, such as oil storage facilities and pipelines or refineries, which Saudi-based al-Qaeda operatives had tried to bomb five years ago.