Riyadh, December 03: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is due to undergo another surgical operation on his back to mend several vertebrae in his spine, a report says.
“King Abdullah…will undergo an operation on the afternoon of December 3 to stabilize some vertebrae in his spinal cord and complete the earlier surgery he underwent,” Reuters quoted a statement by the kingdom’s royal court as saying on Friday.
The statement did not say where the new surgery would take place, but there has been no official word of the king leaving the United States.
The king underwent surgery on his back in New York in November after a blood clot complicated a slipped spinal disc. The kingdom’s health minister said that his health was “very reassuring” after the operation on the herniated disc.
King Abdullah’s health conditions have raised the issue of succession in the Saudi kingdom. He has tasked his half-brother, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, with governing the country.
Sultan is also in his 80s and has been abroad for much of the past two years receiving treatment for what is believed to be cancer.
——–Agencies