A rchive Date
[ 14-05-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Saudi Arabia ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/05/12/85808-ap.html
Saudi attacks linked to al-Qaida
Wed, May 14, 2003
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CP) - Saudi authorities Tuesday linked a 19-member al-Qaida team to carnage at three foreign compounds in the Saudi capital - multiple, simultaneous car bombings that killed at least 30 people, including eight Americans.
Nine attackers were among the dead. Another 194 people, including five Canadians, were wounded, most of them not seriously. The FBI said it would send agents to join the investigation. In a televised address to his people, Crown Prince Abdullah, quoting from the Qur'an, said "hellfire" awaits the attackers.
"If those murderers believe that their bloody crimes will shake even one hair on the body of this nation and its unity, they are deceiving themselves. If they believe they will shake the security and stability of our country, they are dreaming," he said.
In a statement posted on the Saudi Press Agency Web site, the Interior Ministry described the attacks as "suicide operations" and said the nine bodies found in the location of the explosions were those of "the terrorists."
U.S. President George W. Bush vowed to hunt down the attackers. "These despicable acts were committed by killers whose only faith is hate, and the United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice," he said.
Hours later the administration ordered most U.S. diplomatic personnel home from Saudi Arabia.
Canadian Ambassador Melvyn MacDonald, who called the bombings acts "to be deplored," said one Canadian was seriously injured but expected to survive. A Foreign Affairs Department official in Ottawa later issued an updated report saying two Canadians had suffered serious but not life threatening injuries. Three others suffered minor injuries.
"In situations of this nature, things evolve and nationalities of people in hospital often come out later," department spokesman Reynald Doiron said, adding that figures on Canadian casualties could still change.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien said he was "outraged." "I certainly deplore this vicious attack on the part of the terrorists in Riyadh . . . I think they will never win their goal in using these tactics," he said.
"I want to express my support to all those Canadians and to all those who were affected by this terror."
Though no one claimed responsibility for the attacks, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who arrived in Saudi Arabia for an official visit hours after the blasts, said they had "the fingerprints of al-Qaida."
Saudi authorities made a direct connection between the attacks and a May 6 gunfight between police and 19 al-Qaida operatives in the same part of Riyadh where the bombings occurred.
"The only information we have is that some of them were members of the group that was sought a few days ago, the 19 fellows whose pictures came out in the press," Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain and a former Saudi intelligence chief, said in London.
The 19 escaped. Among them were 17 Saudis, a Yemeni, and an Iraqi with Kuwaiti and Canadian citizenship. Interior Minister Prince Nayef said they were believed to take orders directly from Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Saudi officials identified the Canadian as Abdul-Rahman Mansour Jabarah, 23, a former resident of St. Catharines, Ont. He immigrated to Canada from his native Kuwait in 1994.
Authorities confiscated their cache - hand grenades, five suitcases of explosives, rifles and ammunition, as well as computers, communications equipment and cash. At that time, Nayef said al-Qaida was "weak and almost non-existent."
But if Monday's bombings were the work of al-Qaida, it would mean that a terrorist organization that bore the brunt of American military might in Afghanistan is still capable of mounting co-ordinated attacks, even in one of the world's most tightly policed countries.
Nayef, speaking to the daily Okaz, did not rule out the possibility of more attacks.
"I don't rule out anything. We must not sit back and say this will not happen," he said. "This is life, and incidents occur in every country and we are in a period of anxiety and terror acts. The kingdom is one of the countries being targeted."
The multi-pronged, synchronized nature of Monday's bombings recalled the events of Sept. 11. Here again, the targets were both westerners and their world.
The al-Hamra, Jadawal and Vinnell compounds - all within 16 kilometres of each other in northeastern Riyadh, the last two less than a kilometre apart - house business executives, oil industry professionals and teachers.
Behind their six-metre walls women need not wear enveloping robes, American and European children ride their bikes in the street, backyard barbecues are common and houses are decorated for Christmas and Halloween.
At around 11:30 p.m. Monday, witnesses reported, there was gunfire and a series of explosions.
"I thought the door was going to come off its hinges," said Patrick Amour, a French executive who lives near al-Hamra.
Amour said he heard three explosions: One loud one from al-Hamra and others more faintly from the two other compounds. They "went off within three seconds, less than three seconds, as if it were an echo," he said.
The blasts were "absolutely terrifying," one Scottish survivor, John Gardiner, told the British Broadcasting Corp.
"All the doors came in, the external doors, the internal doors, all the windows, and the next think I knew I was lying on my back in shattered glass," he said.
It was not clear how many cars were used. A guard at one of the housing compounds told al-Watan newspaper that seven cars exploded there, all apparently carrying suicide bombers.
Facades of five- and four- storey buildings were sheared off, revealing apartment interiors, their contents swept out by the blasts.
One explosion near al-Hamra's recreation facility left a crater six metres across. Several cars and six or seven single-family homes within 50 metres of the blast were destroyed and debris - shredded, charred shreds of cars and furniture, melted patio chairs, uprooted palm trees - was scattered another 25 or 30 metres.
Residents sifted through debris for their belongings Tuesday and packed up to move.
"I hope those people who were responsible for these acts face the full weight of the law, and if they are men of religion, that when they depart this world that they are punished in the next world, too," said al-Hamra resident Graham Bull, a teacher at the British School who suffered minor injuries.
Police vehicles, lights flashing, patrolled the walls of the compounds and kept reporters out.
Seven Saudis were listed among the dead, including Mohammed Abdullah al-Blaihed, a son of Riyadh's Deputy Gov. Abdullah al-Blaihed. The elder al-Blaihed owned the al-Hamra compound.
The Saudis said the others who died included two Jordanians, two Filipinos, one Lebanese and one Swiss.
Saudi Arabia has a large population of expatriate workers, including about 35,000 Americans.
Late Tuesday, the State Department said eight Americans had died in the attacks. Seven American victims lived in a single, four-storey building. Details on the location of the eighth victim were not given. Seventy Americans who worked for the Vinnell Corp., a Virginia company with a contract to train Saudi military and civilian officials, lived there; by chance, 50 were away on a training exercise.
There had been indications that a terrorist attack might be imminent. A counter-terrorism official in Washington said information from the past two weeks indicated al-Qaida had been planning a strike in Saudi Arabia.
Earlier this month, the State Department advised Americans to avoid travel to Saudi Arabia because of increased terrorism concerns, and the U.S. Embassy said it had information that terrorists were completing plans to attack American interests in the country.
In a series of e-mails Saturday and Sunday, a man who said he was the head of an al-Qaida training camp, Abu Mohammed Al-Ablaj, or Mullah Seif el Din, told the Arabic weekly Al Majalla that the group was planning an attack in the Persian Gulf using weapons and ammunition stored there.
This came after the seizure of the weapons cache in Riyadh. Nayef, the interior minister, said those weapons were to be used to attack the Saudi royal family and American and British interests.
He told al-Watan that one suspect surrendered in connection with the weapons - it was unclear when - and was being interrogated about Monday's explosions. So far he had offered "limited information," Nayef said. Saudi officials almost immediately gave the FBI team permission to participate in the investigation into the bombings.
But there has been friction between Saudi and American law enforcement in the past - in the aftermath of the 1996 Khobar Tower bombings that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, Saudi police would not allow FBI agents to interrogate suspects.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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