Kuwait’s Interior Ministry said yesterday it had detained among others the owner of a vehicle which a suicide bomber used to get to a Shi’ite Muslim mosque where he blew himself up, killing 27 and wounding 200 people mid-prayer.

Militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the country’s worst militant attack on Friday, one of three attacks on three continents that day apparently linked to hardline Islamists.

In Tunisia, a gunman killed 39 people including Western tourists on a beach, and in France a decapitated body was found after an attacker rammed his car into a gas container, triggering an explosion.

The Interior Ministry said it was now looking for the driver who vanished shortly after Friday’s blast in Kuwait, which has been spared the rampant violence in neighbouring Iraq and recent spate of Islamic State bombings of Shi’ite mosques in Saudi Arabia, another neighbour.

We will cut the evil hand that interferes with our homeland’s security

A security source told Reuters “numerous arrests” had been made in connection with Friday’s bombing, which government officials said was intended to stir enmity between Kuwait’s Sunni majority and Shi’ite minority.

Two Iranian nationals were among those killed, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham was quoted as saying by Iranian state media yesterday. Relatives of seven of those killed wept and prayed over their shrouded corpses at a mosque yesterday, who will be buried in the Shi’ite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.

A mass funeral for most of those killed will be held at Kuwait City’s Grand Mosque later yesterday, KUNA reported. A day of national mourning has been declared. Shi’ites are between 15 and 30 per cent of the population of Kuwait, a mostly Sunni country where members of both communities live side by side with little apparent friction.

“We will cut the evil hand that interferes with our homeland’s security,” Interior Minister Mohammed al Khaled al Sabah said.