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The capture of the Holy Mosques at Medina and Mecca is a key IS objective
Security fence includes thermal imaging systems and battlefield radar
Attack on border post last week said to be first IS attack on kingdom

Published: 21:30 GMT, 15 January 2015 | Updated: 05:53 GMT, 16 January 2015

The Saudi royal family are building a 600-mile barrier to fortify the northern frontier of their kingdom.

The fence and ditch, punctuated with radar surveillance towers, command centres and guard posts, aims to protect the Saudis' oil-rich territory from invasion by the Islamic State insurgency.

Last week a suicide bombing and gun attack which killed two Saudi border guards and their commanding officer was styled by one analyst as the Islamic State's first attack on the kingdom.

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Defences: This multilayered fence and ditch, punctuated with radar surveillance towers, command centres and guard posts, aims to protect the Saudis' oil-rich territory from invasion by the Islamic State insurgency

No group claimed responsibility for the assault in a remote desert area, but it happened just next to Iraq's Anbar province where Islamic State militants are fighting Iraqi army forces.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud inaugurated the first phase of the border security project in September, soon after Islamic State's Sunni insurgency swept across Iraq.

The multi-layered barrier, which will eventually stretch across the Saudi-Iraq border from Jordan to Kuwait, includes 78 monitoring towers, eight command centres, 10 mobile surveillance vehicles, 32 rapid-response centres, and three rapid intervention squads, reports Janes.com.

Citing a promotional video, the defence industry magazine reported the six-mile-deep barrier consists of a ditch, two fences and a patrol road connecting the watchtowers and guard rooms. The video included footage of thermal imagers and battlefield radar systems that can detect individuals at up to 12 miles away and vehicles at up to 24 miles away.

Islamic State sees Saudi Arabia's links to the West as a betrayal of Islam and has called for 'lone-wolf' attacks against Saudi security forces, the Shi'ite Muslim minority and foreigners.

Saudi forces have joined U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State positions in Syria and mobilised conservative Sunni clergy to describe the ideology of the al Qaeda offshoot as deviant.

Expansion of the Islamic State could turn into an existential struggle for the Saudi regime, which many hardline Islamists see as decadent and corrupt.

A key goal of jihadists is the ultimate capture of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to the Two Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina.

Tragic: A picture released by the Saudi Press Agency shows a cleric and mourners praying in the holy mosque in Mecca during the funeral of three Saudi guards killed in an attack on the kingdom's border

Two Saudi guards killed on border with Iraq

Relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia have already been deeply strained.

Riyadh has accused former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of creating the conditions for the jihadist insurgency in his country by marginalising its Sunni Arab minority.

Maliki in turn has accused the oil-rich kingdom of supporting 'terrorism' in Shi'ite-majority Iraq.

Three of the four killed in last week's raid were Saudi nationals who local media described as members of the 'deviant group', a phrase authorities use to describe Al Qaeda.

Three more Saudi nationals and four Syrians have since been arrested in Saudi Arabia in connection with the attack.