A gunman killed five people in an attack on a Shia meeting hall in Saudi Arabia on Friday before being shot dead by police, state-owned Al Arabiya TV and a resident said. "A person who opened fire on a husseiniya was killed, and the attacker was in his twenties," reported another government-run channel, Al Ekhbariya TV, adding that the shooter's motives remained unclear. A resident reached by telephone told Reuters that the assailant approached the meeting hall in the eastern city of Saihat in a taxi but was stopped at a checkpoint manned by volunteers protecting the site.

Police arrived and a gunbattle broke out, which the resident said injured several people and left the shooter dead. Amateur video described as filmed by activists inside the hall showed worshippers, including young children, crowding towards the entrance at the sound of gunfire before retreating in fear.

A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people in an attack on a mosque used by members of a local security force in south-west Saudi Arabia in August, and two separate suicide bomb attacks in May on Shia mosques killed 25 worshippers. Groups of volunteer security guards have been formed around holy sites in the largely Shia Eastern province of the kingdom, whose rulers follow a strict version of Sunni Islam shared by the majority of the country's population. Some local activists have accused security forces of not doing enough to thwart the assaults, charge officials deny. Saudi authorities said in July they had rounded up 431 Islamic State suspects and had foiled plots to attack places of worship and security forces.

Copyright Reuters, 2015