Gunmen kill 5 in Saudi village on Ashura eve

Masked gunmen killed five people in a mostly Shiite area of eastern Saudi Arabia late on Monday, as the minority community prepared to celebrate the festival of Ashura, police said.
Nine people were also wounded in the shooting, the latest in a spate of sporadic unrest in the oil-rich east of the Sunni-dominated kingdom where most its two million Shiites live.
The three assailants fired machineguns and pistols on a crowd leaving a building in the village of Al-Dalwa in the Al-Ihsa district of Eastern Province, a police spokesman cited by the official SPA news agency said.
The spokesman did not specify what the building was or what motive the gunmen might have had.
But in postings on social networking sites, residents said that the crowd had been leaving a Shiite place of worship on the eve of Ashura, one of the main festivals of their faith.
The commemoration of Ashura, which marks the death of Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures, peaks on Tuesday.
Protests and sporadic attacks on security forces have wracked Shiite areas of Eastern Province where the minority community complains of marginalisation.
Tensions escalated last month after a Saudi court handed down a death sentence against leading Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a driving force behind the demonstrations.
Protests erupted in the region in February 2011 after an outbreak of violence between Shiite pilgrims and religious police in the Muslim holy city of Medina.
They escalated after the kingdom's intervention in neighbouring Bahrain later that year to support a Sunni monarchy against an uprising led by the Shiite majority.
Hundreds were arrested in a subsequent crackdown, according to Amnesty International.
Nimr was shot and wounded during his arrest in July 2012 rekindling tensions in the region.
After his death sentence for sedition on October 15, his family accused the court of ignoring his "peaceful and non-violent approach," saying the case had caused "social and political discontent".
Three days later, gunmen fired on a security patrol in the east, setting fire to an oil pipeline.
Source: AFP