King Salman was in stable condition, sources said.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:
Saudi King Salman held a video-call cabinet meeting on Tuesday from the hospital in the capital Riyadh, a day after the 84-year-old monarch was admitted with what state media described as inflammation of the gallbladder biliary.
Three Saudi sources previously told Reuters the king was in stable condition.
A video of the king presiding over the meeting aired Tuesday night on Saudi state television. In the video, which has no sound, King Salman can be seen behind a desk, silently reading and leafing through documents.
The king, who heads the world‘s largest oil exporter and a close ally of the United States since 2015, was undergoing medical checks, state media said on Monday, citing a Royal Court statement without further details.
Three well-known Saudi sources who declined to be identified, two of whom spoke late Monday and one Tuesday, told Reuters the king was “fine”.
A region official, who requested anonymity, said he spoke to one of King Salman’s sons on Monday who appeared “calm” and that there was no sense of panic over the monarch’s health .
King Salman on Monday received phone calls from the leaders of Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan, state media reported.
A diplomatic source said the kingdom’s de facto crown prince Mohammed bin Salman returned to Riyadh from his palace in the Red Sea city of NEOM on Monday, canceling a scheduled meeting with a visiting Iraqi delegation.
The diplomatic source and the third Saudi source said the crown prince was still in the capital.
King Salman last spoke publicly on March 19 in a five-minute televised speech on the coronavirus pandemic. State media posted photos and videos of the king chairing weekly cabinet meetings online. The media also posted images online of the Crown Prince attending the meetings.
King Salman, the keeper of Islam’s holiest sites, spent more than 2.5 years as Saudi Crown Prince and was Deputy Prime Minister from June 2012 before becoming king. He was also governor of the Riyadh region for over 50 years.
He appointed his young son Mohammed as crown prince to become the next to the throne after a 2017 palace coup that ousted then crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
