Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has undergone successful back surgery at a hospital in the capital, Riyadh, to tighten a loose ligament, the royal court said in a statement carried by state media on Sunday. The stability of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter and a key US ally, is of global concern. The kingdom holds more than a fifth of world crude reserves and is the birthplace of Islam.
"A surgery was performed on the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, at the National Guard's King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh on Saturday ... where a loose ligament in the upper back was tightened," the statement, carried on state television and the SPA news agency, said. "With God's help, the surgery ended at 0315 on Sunday morning ... and thanks be to God it was successful," it added in Arabic.
The king, in his late 80s, underwent an operation to tighten ligaments around his third vertebra in October of last year and had two rounds of back surgery in the United States in 2010 after suffering a herniated disc, leading to a three-month recuperation period outside the kingdom.