Saudi king had surgery on Friday, is well - Prince

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah underwent surgery on Friday and is well, a leading member of the ruling family said.

"He is well. He had an operation today and I hope he soon gets better," Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief, told reporters on the sidelines of a Gulf security conference in Bahrain.

Asked when the king would return home, Prince Turki replied: "I have no idea. You will have to wait for what comes out (officially)."

The kingdom's royal court said in a statement carried by the state news agency earlier that the elderly king would undergo surgery on Friday to stabilise vertebrae in his spinal column.

The king, thought to be around 86 or 87, 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 afterward that his health was "very reassuring".(Reuters)