RIYADH, Dec 18, (Agencies): Saudi police arrested 38 people in the holy city of Madinah after fighting erupted near Islam’s oldest mosque Al-Quba on the Shiite religious holiday of Ashura, Saudi media reported on Saturday. Several people suffered minor injuries in Thursday’s clashes between “groups of youths,” the press reports said.Three security officials were also wounded, the Al-Madina newspaper said. The Shiite website Rasid.com said the fighting pitted members of Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority against majority Sunnis. Many of the kingdom’s top Sunni clerics have condemned Shiites as having rejected “true” Islam. Thursday was the climax of Ashura, a 10-day commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, one of the key figures of the Shiite faith.

A grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Hussein was killed in 680 AD by the armies of the caliph Yazid in a battle in Karbala, Iraq. There were clashes between Shiite and Sunni groups near the Al-Quba mosque in April last year. Police said they were triggered by “an argument between teenagers during a football match”. During Thursday’s clashes, security forces were deployed to disperse the crowds, the security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. The Rasid website said residents of Medina’s Asbaa neighborhood, which is mostly Sunni, used poles and stones in their assault against Shiites in the nearby Qabaa district, home to a number of Shiite places of worship.

Several Saudi newspapers reported the violence, but for the most part without mentioning any sectarian element. Though one paper, Al-Riyadh, blamed “young zealots who were wearing black clothes,” in a reference to Shiites participating in the mourning rituals. The Saudi Medina daily said 38 people were arrested, three policemen were injured and 36 cars were damaged. The Al-Watan daily said security forces fired gunshots in the air after failing for two hours to end the clashes. Sunni distrust of Shiites is both religious and political. The hard-line Wahhabi school of Islam, which is the state religion in Saudi Arabia, considers Shiites infidels. The government is thought to fear that Saudi Shiites will be emboldened by the increased power of Shiites in Iraq since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein. They also are concerned that Shiite power Iran will use fellow Shiites to destabilize the kingdom.