Saudi king undergoes gall bladder surgery

Saudi Arabia’s 84-year-old ruler King Salman underwent successful surgery Thursday to remove his gall bladder, the royal court said, three days after he was admitted to hospital.

It is rare for Saudi Arabia to report on the health of the ageing monarch, who has ruled the top oil exporter and the Arab world’s biggest economy since 2015.

The king is the second reigning monarch in the Gulf to be hospitalised recently, after Kuwait’s 91-year-old emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, amid the twin regional crises of the coronavirus pandemic and a plunge in crude prices.

The king “underwent a laparoscopic surgery to remove the gall bladder today… at King Faisal specialist hospital in Riyadh,” the royal court said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press

Agency (SPA).

The king will remain in hospital for some time after the “successful” surgery, the statement added.