Bomber of Kuwait mosque was a Saudi national

A suicide bomber who carried out a deadly attack claimed by the Islamic State group on a Shia mosque in Kuwait was a Saudi national, the interior ministry said on Sunday.

In a statement carried by the official KUNA news agency, the ministry identified the attacker as Fahd Suleiman Abdulmohsen al-Qaba'a.

Kuwaiti police arrested the driver who transported the suicide bomber to the mosque where he blew himself up, killing 26 and injuring 227 people, the interior ministry said.

Authorities have also detained the owner of the house used as a hideout by the bomber, a Kuwaiti national who subscribes to "extremist and deviant ideology", the ministry said in a statement.

The suicide attack, the first bombing of a mosque in the oil-rich Gulf state, was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The IS-affiliated group in Saudi Arabia, calling itself Najd Province, said Abu Suleiman al-Muwahhid carried out the bombing.

It is not clear if the two names refer to the same person, as the name given by the militant is a nom de guerre. 

The authorities had initially been unable to identify him from remains found at the scene, Al-Anbaa daily reported.

Samples of the body were sent to neighbouring countries for DNA tests as no records of his were found in Kuwait, the daily said.

The driver, named as Abdulrahman Sabah Eidan Saud, was described as an "illegal resident" born in 1989, who took the bomber to the Al-Imam Al-Sadeq mosque in Kuwait City on Friday.

"Illegal resident" is the official term used in Kuwait to describe stateless people, locally known as bidoons, who number around 110,000 and claim the right to Kuwaiti citizenship.

The driver had been hiding in a house in the Al-Rigga area in the city's southern Al-Ahmadi Governorate.

The authorities on Saturday arrested the owner of the car, Jarrah Nimr Mejbil Ghazi, born 1988, and also listed as a stateless person.

The authorities will "continue efforts to uncover the conspirators in this criminal act and to reveal all of the information and circumstances behind it", the interior ministry said.

Local media said 18 of those killed were Kuwaitis, three Iranians, two Indians, one each from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and one bidoon.