As a body passed, shrouded in Kuwait's flag, dozens of hands were raised from the crowd to support the bier and help carry it toward the Shi'ite Muslim cemetery where most victims of Friday's Islamic State mosque attack were buried on Saturday.

Among the thousands of Shi'ite mourners at the Jaafari cemetery in the Sulaibkhat district of Kuwait City, shock and grief were tempered by a grim sense of resignation that a long-feared attack on their community had finally taken place.

Relations between Islam's main sects have traditionally been less fraught in Kuwait than in other Gulf Arab states. But they have been undermined by a rise in Salafist Sunni Islam, which brands Shi'ites heretical, and the sectarian hatred unleashed by wars in Iraq and Syria, mourners said.
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Friday's attack, which killed 27 and injured more than 200 at the Imam Sadeq mosque in central Kuwait City, was claimed by Islamic State's Wilayat of Najd division, which last month bombed two Shi'ite mosques in Saudi Arabia, killing 25.

"I was expecting this to happen. What makes us different that we should not be a target? It's clear no country here is immune," said Manaf Behbehani, a marine biology professor at Kuwait University, standing among the mourners as the bodies processed toward the graveyard.

"We had sectarianism before Syria. There were examples, even in parliament, of language that was very strong. We had tensions, but there was no violence. No attacks. No bombing," he added.

Among the Kuwait flags and traditional banners of mourning, in red, black or green, and bearing the names of early Shi'ite Imams some placards were carried by Saudis or Bahraini members of the sect who had come in solidarity.