Saudi king appoints new spy chief as regional crisis spreads

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Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has appointed Prince Khaled bin Bandar as head of intelligence three months after his predecessor, who was in charge of efforts to support Syrian rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, was sacked. It was unclear from the royal decree issued late on Monday whether Prince Khaled will have a similar brief on Syria. Saudi Arabia has watched with increasing alarm in recent weeks as Sunni militants in Iraq, who count Saudi citizens in their number, have seized swathes of territory and declared the creation of an Islamic Caliphate in that country and in Syria. Riyadh's policy in Syria is to back rebel groups it sees as moderate in an effort to bring down Assad, a close ally of its main regional enemy Iran, whose tactics in bombing urban centres have been described by Saudi officials as "ge**cide".

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