RIYADH, Sudi Arabia: Saudi Minister for Interior Affairs has warned the Kingdom’s clergy that they should discourage Saudis, including their own children, from going to fight in Iraq.

Addressing hundreds of clerics, Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz appeared to suggest that some members of Saudi Arabia's powerful religious establishment had not doing enough in the fight against terrorists who are warring against Western influence in the region.

"Do you know that your sons who go to Iraq are used only for blowing themselves up? Iraqi officials told me that themselves," the leading member of the royal family said in comments carried by state media.

"They are brought to put on explosive belts or blow themselves up in cars ... Innocents die. Are you happy for your children to become instruments of murder?" he added.

There have been reports in Saudi Arabia about sons of some prominent Saudi clerics trying to get into Iraq to join al-Qaeda terrorists fighting U.S. forces and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.