FILE -- In this July 5, 2013 file photo, worshippers visit the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. State-linked Saudi news websites reported an explosion has gone off outside the Prophet's Mosque,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE -- In this July 5, 2013 file photo, worshippers visit the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. State-linked Saudi news websites reported an explosion has gone off outside the Prophet's Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites in the city of Medina on Monday, July 4, 2016, the same day that two... (Associated Press) 
 
 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — State-linked Saudi news websites reported an explosion Monday near one of Islam's holiest sites in the city of Medina, as two suicide bombers struck in different cities without killing anyone. 
 
 Sabq news site and other local media, quoting unnamed sources, said the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber near a security building outside the Prophet Muhammad's mosque. Several cars caught fire. Local media showed images of what appeared to be a fire outside one of the buildings overlooking the Prophet's Mosque. It was not immediately clear if anyone was killed or wounded in the blast. 
 
 The sprawling mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried is visited by millions of Muslims from around the world each year during pilgrimages to Mecca. The area would have been packed with pilgrims for prayer during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the kingdom on Tuesday. 
 
 The Interior Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment. 
 
 Qari Ziyaad Patel, 36, from Johannesburg, South Africa, was at the mosque when he heard a blast just as the call to sunset prayers was ending. People were breaking their fast with dates so the mood was subdued, he said. Many at first thought it was the sound of traditional, celebratory cannon fire, but then he felt the ground shake. 
 
 "The vibrations were very strong," he said. "It sounded like a building imploded." 
 
 Also Monday evening, a suicide bomber and a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, according to a resident there, several hours after another suicide bomber carried out an attack near the U.S. Consulate in the western city of Jiddah. 
 
 The possibility of coordinated, multiple attacks across different cities in Saudi Arabia on the same day underscores the threat the kingdom faces from extremists who view the Western-allied Saudi monarchy as heretics and enemies of Islam. Saudi Arabia is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. 
 
 The attack in the eastern region of Qatif did not appear to cause any injuries, said resident Mohammed al-Nimr, whose brother is Nimr-al-Nimr, a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric executed in January. He told The Associated Press the bomber detonated his suicide vest when most residents of the neighborhood were at home breaking the daily Ramadan fast. 
 
 Qatif is heavily populated by Shiites, who are a minority in the Sunni-ruled kingdom. Al-Nimr said that near the body of a suicide bomber was a car bomb that also went off around the same time. 
 
 The IS group's local affiliates in the kingdom have previously attacked Shiite places of worship, including an attack on a Shiite mosque in Qatif in May 2015 that killed 21 people. 
 
 Earlier Monday, the Interior Ministry said a suicide bomber had detonated his explosives when security guards approached him near the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah. The attacker died and the two security men were lightly wounded, according to the ministry statement, which was published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Some cars in the parking lot were damaged. 
 
 Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki was quoted in the statement as saying the guards noticed the man was acting suspiciously at an intersection on the corner of the heavily fortified consulate, near a hospital and a mosque. 
 
 The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia confirmed there were no casualties among consular staff, and said it remains in contact with Saudi authorities as they investigate. 
 
 No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. 
 
 The Interior Ministry did not say whether the bomber intended to target the U.S. diplomatic compound, adding that an investigation is underway to determine his identity. 
 
 The state-run news channel al-Ekhbariya, quoting the Interior Ministry, said the bomber was not a Saudi citizen, but a resident of the kingdom. It gave no further details on his nationality. There are around 9 million foreigners living in Saudi Arabia, which has a total population of 30 million. 
 
 Footage aired on the channel after the attack showed crime scene investigators and police casing the area for evidence and dusting for fingerprints. Al-Ekhbariya said security forces detonated six explosive devices found at the scene. 
 
 A 2004 al-Qaida-linked militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah killed five locally hired consular employees and four gunmen. The three-hour battle at the compound came amid a wave of al-Qaida attacks targeting Westerners and Saudi security posts. 
 
 More recently, Saudi Arabia has been a target of Islamic State attacks that have killed dozens of people. In June, the Interior Ministry reported 26 terror attacks in the kingdom in the last two years. 
 
 The U.S. Embassy regularly issues advisory messages for U.S. citizens in Saudi Arabia. In a message issued Sunday and another one issued after the attack Monday, the embassy urged Americans to "remain aware of their surroundings, and take extra precautions when travelling throughout the country." It also advised citizens to "carefully consider the risks of traveling to Saudi Arabia." 
 
 In neighboring Kuwait on Monday, security forces said they had arrested several suspects with alleged ties to IS, including an 18-year-old man who was planning to attack a Shiite mosque in the final days of Ramadan. Officials did not say when the arrests took place. An IS affiliate claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing carried out by a Saudi man last year in one of Kuwait's oldest Shiite mosques. That attack killed 27 people. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Adam Schreck contributed to this report. ||||| GENEVA/DUBAI (Reuters) - The king of Saudi Arabia warned his country would strike with an “iron hand” against people who preyed on youth vulnerable to religious extremism, a day after suicide bombers struck three cities in an apparently coordinated campaign of attacks. 
 
 In a speech marking Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that celebrates the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, King Salman said a major challenge facing Saudi Arabia was preserving hope for youth who faced the risk of radicalization. 
 
 “We will strike with an iron hand those who target the minds and thoughts... of our dear youth,” Salman, 80, said. 
 
 Four security officers were killed in Monday’s attacks that targeted U.S. diplomats, Shi’ite Muslim worshippers and a security headquarters at a mosque in the holy city of Medina. The attacks all seem to have been timed to coincide with the approach of the Islamic Eid holiday. 
 
 The U.N. human rights chief on Tuesday described the bombing outside the Prophet Mohammed’s Mosque in Medina as “an attack on Islam itself” and many Muslims expressed shock that their second-holiest site had been targeted. 
 
 No group has claimed responsibility but Islamic State militants have carried out similar bombings in the U.S.-allied, Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom in the past year, targeting minority Shi’ites and Saudi security forces. 
 
 Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and a member of the Jordanian royal family, delivered his remarks via a spokesman in Geneva. 
 
 “This is one of the holiest sites in Islam, and for such an attack to take place there, during Ramadan, can be considered a direct attack on Muslims all across the world,” he said. “It is an attack on the religion itself.” 
 
 ATTACK UNNERVES SAUDIS 
 
 Militant attacks on Medina are unprecedented. The city is home to the second most sacred site in Islam, a mosque built in the 7th century by the Prophet Mohammed, the founder of Islam, which also houses his tomb. 
 
 Muslim worshippers gather after a suicide bomber detonated a device near the security headquarters of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, July 4, 2016. REUTERS/Handout 
 
 Attacks on Mecca, the holiest place in Islam, have been extremely rare. The Al Saud ruling family considers itself the protectors of both sites. Islamic State says the Saudi rulers are apostates and has declared its intention to topple them. 
 
 Saudis were rattled by the rare, high-profile attack. 
 
 “I apologize to everyone if I don’t congratulate you this Eid,” Khaled bin Saleh al-Shathri, a Saudi businessman, wrote on Twitter. “I am shocked by the deaths of five of my brothers and the wounding of four others as they guarded the holiest places.” 
 
 Iran, the region’s major Shi’ite power, also condemned the attacks. 
 
 Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and anti-terror tsar, Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, sought on Tuesday to reassure Saudis of the country’s security. 
 
 “The security of the homeland is good, it is at its highest levels and thanks be to God it gets stronger every day,” the state news agency SPA quoted him as saying during a visit to some of the wounded in the Jeddah attack. 
 
 Slideshow (3 Images) 
 
 Prince Mohammed has been credited for ending a bombing campaign by al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006. 
 
 Monday’s bombings happened days before the end of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn until dusk. 
 
 Saudi security officials say Islamic State’s supporters inside the kingdom mainly act independently from the group in Iraq and Syria, its main areas of operations. 
 
 Salah al-Budair, the imam of the Prophet’s Mosque, warned young people about being lured by the “malignant” ideology of Islamic State. “(The bomber) is an infidel who has sold himself to the enemies of his religion and his country,” he said. ||||| FILE -- In this Monday, July 4, 2016, file photo released by Saudi Press Agency, SPA, Sheikh al-Faleh, deputy director of the Prophet's Mosque, kisses the forehead of a man who was injured when a suicide... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE -- In this Monday, July 4, 2016, file photo released by Saudi Press Agency, SPA, Sheikh al-Faleh, deputy director of the Prophet's Mosque, kisses the forehead of a man who was injured when a suicide bomber attacked a mosque Monday, at a hospital in Medina, Saudi Arabia. As millions of Muslims around... (Associated Press) 
 
 BEIRUT (AP) — As Muslims around the world celebrate the end of Ramadan, many are struggling to comprehend a wave of attacks that killed 350 people across several continents during the holy month and made urgent the question of what drives the militants to ever more spectacular violence against civilians. 
 
 The diverse, high-profile targets — including one that struck the heart of Islam in the month's final days — underline the warnings of many experts: the Islamic State group, especially when on the defensive at home, will metastasize far beyond its theater of operations. 
 
 The extremist group has always sought attention and recruits through brazen terrorism. The projection of daring, operational competence and utter disregard for the norms of its enemies has proven a winning strategy among its disenfranchised and angry followers around the Muslim world. 
 
 But having lost the key city of Fallujah in recent weeks, capping a series of setbacks in Iraq, the group is pushing to project strength while also diverting attention from its battlefield humiliations. 
 
 "ISIS is waging an existential fight," said Fawaz Gerges, a London-based scholar of jihadi groups, using an alternate acronym for the militant group. "The future of the Islamic State is on the line, and it is trying to maximize the cost for its adversaries and also to inspire this particular segment of young men and women who subscribe to its ideology." 
 
 If the militants needed to send a message, the onset of Ramadan provided a convenient context. 
 
 Although the month is a holy time meant for introspection, peace and piety, it has been transformed in the hands of the extremists who have thrived during the recent decades of turbulence around the region, particularly in war zones like Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently in Syria. 
 
 Although the vast majority of the faithful regard Ramadan as a time for prayer and forgiveness, militant Muslims and hard-line clerics have been touting the month as a time for victory in jihad, or holy war. 
 
 Weeks before Ramadan, IS called for its supporters to strike wherever possible. In a digital age where statements on the internet quickly proliferate, those calls appear to have found resonance among some circles of disenchanted Muslim youth around the globe. 
 
 From Omar Mateen, who pledged allegiance to IS as he shot and killed 49 people at a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, to the militants who killed 44 at Istanbul airport, to the young men who killed 20 hostages at a popular restaurant in Bangladesh on July 1, such violence highlights how radicals across the world can carry out attacks that are instantly attached to IS, even when the Syria- and Iraq-based group does not formally claim responsibility. 
 
 They also underlined the increasingly blurred lines in which attacks, even those stemming from local grievances, could be assigned to IS and be transformed into a global cause. The bloodshed, targeting Muslims and non-Muslims alike, also demonstrates the difficulty in neutralizing a threat that is often inspired and not necessarily directed. 
 
 Still, many of the attacks appeared to have involved careful planning, spaced out with targets clearly meant to induce fear and shock across continents. 
 
 In Yemen, where suicide bombers and other militants carried out at least seven simultaneous attacks in the southern port city of Mukalla against security targets on June 27, 43 people were killed. In one of the attacks, a bomb was concealed in a box of food brought to soldiers at a checkpoint to break their dawn-to-dusk Ramadan fast. 
 
 In the capital of Bangladesh, where attackers killed 22 people at a popular restaurant in an upscale Dhaka neighborhood frequented by diplomats and foreigners, witnesses said the attackers tortured some of the hostages before killing them for failure to recite from the Quran. 
 
 In Baghdad, residents hardened by years of war said the July 3 bombing was like no other, trapping shoppers in an inferno of fire that killed at least 175 people in one of the deadliest single attacks since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. 
 
 "This is a second Hiroshima and Nagasaki," said Ammar al-Khafaji, a 50-year-old local from Karada district of Baghdad, where the attack happened. His son lost three of his friends in the bombing. 
 
 The wave of attacks culminated Monday with triple suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia, including one outside the Prophet's Mosque in the city of Medina, one of the holiest sites in Islam that killed four security troops. The nature of the attacks and their apparently coordinated timing suggested the Islamic State group could be to blame, although no one claimed responsibility. 
 
 The attacks come as the IS group is increasingly on the defensive in both Syria and Iraq. Its hold on territory has shrunk in both countries, after losing key strongholds, including the Iraqi city of Fallujah. 
 
 Ibrahim Bayram, a Beirut-based political analyst, said the attacks aim to dispel the notion that the organization is going to vanish or shrink. 
 
 "With such attacks, it is proving that it is still capable of crossing borders and conducting attacks" everywhere, including in the holy sites in Saudi Arabia, he said. That is a key for the group, which seeks to boost its credentials and recruitment. 
 
 The attack in Medina outside the sprawling mosque grounds where the Prophet Muhammad is buried, however, sparked particular disgust. Millions of Muslims from around the world visit the mosque every year as part of their pilgrimage to Mecca. Across social media and on channels used by the Islamic State group, supporters appeared to be grappling to explain or come to terms with the attack, quickly labeled by opponents as an attack on Islam itself. 
 
 This might partly explain why there was no responsibility claim. 
 
 Mohammad Ballout, writing in Lebanon's daily As-Safir newspaper on Tuesday, said the attacks in Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia aim to send a direct warning to the Sunni-led nations that the undeclared truce with them may collapse if they don't revise their strategies toward IS and halt their support for the war on the group. 
 
 Gerges said the Medina attack was not surprising. "There are no red lines anymore," he said. 
 
 It is also possible that the radicals are seeking to goad the U.S.-led coalition arrayed against them to take them on in their strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. 
 
 Those are the prizes, yet the Iraqis seem reluctant to move on their second-largest city, lost two years ago. In Syria, there is almost no ground war to speak of: with the coalition reluctant to ally with the government of President Bashar Assad, it has sufficed with air power, leaving the fight on the ground to Kurdish militias and smaller groups. The two cities offer the prospect of a bloody, house-to-house fight that many jihadis calculate would be worth losing, if only because it would cost their enemy so dearly. 
 
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 Associated Press writer Ali Abdul-Hassan in Baghdad contributed to this report.
– Yet more high-profile terror attacks: Suicide bombers struck three cities in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, including in Medina near one of the holiest sites in Islam. In the latter incident, the explosion took place outside the mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried, reports AP. Several cars caught fire, and local media showed images of what appeared to be a fire outside one of the buildings overlooking the Prophet's Mosque. The number of casualties was unclear, though Reuters reports three bombers and two security forces officers were killed. The sprawling mosque is visited by millions of Muslims from around the world each year during pilgrimages to Mecca. The area would have been packed with pilgrims for prayer during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the kingdom on Tuesday. Also Monday evening, a suicide bomber and a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, several hours after another suicide bomber carried out an attack near the US Consulate in the western city of Jiddah. Neither of those two attacks killed anyone but the bombers. The possibility of coordinated, multiple attacks across different cities in Saudi Arabia on the same day underscores the threat the kingdom faces from extremists who view the Western-allied Saudi monarchy as heretics and enemies of Islam. Saudi Arabia is part of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The violence follows attacks in Iraq, Bangladesh, and Turkey.