Kuwait : Kuwait on Sunday identified the suicide bomber behind an attack on a Shia mosque as a Saudi national, after a series of arrests in connection with the blast that left 26 dead.

Friday's attack also wounded 227 worshippers in the first bombing of a mosque in the tiny Gulf state, and Kuwait's security services have vowed to catch and punish those responsible.

The Islamic State group's Saudi affiliate, the so-called Najd Province, claimed the bombing and identified the assailant as Abu Suleiman al-Muwahhid.

Kuwait's interior ministry gave the real name of the attacker as Fahd Suleiman Abdulmohsen al-Qaba'a, in a statement carried by the official KUNA news agency.

It said that he entered the country through Kuwait Airport at dawn on Friday, the same day of the bombing.

A handout photograph of Qaba'a showed a young bearded man wearing a traditional Saudi headdress. 

Earlier on Sunday, the ministry said that security services arrested the driver of the car that transported the bomber to the Al-Imam Al-Sadeq mosque in Kuwait City.

He was named as Abdulrahman Sabah Eidan Saud and described as an ‘illegal resident’ born in 1989.

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

Authorities have also detained the owner of a house used as a hideout by the driver, describing the owner as a Kuwaiti national who subscribes to ‘extremist and deviant ideology’.

‘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.

Alleged IS executioner Mohammed Emwazi, who became known by media as ‘Jihadi John’, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin which later moved to London.