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10 die as militants, Saudi police clash
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-30 08:46
Islamic extremists set off bombs and battled with police in the Saudi capital
Wednesday night, leaving nine militants and one bystander dead and causing oil
prices to jump as the insurgents signaled they will keep up attacks despite the
kingdom's crackdown on al-Qaida.
A car bomb was detonated by remote control near the Interior Ministry in
central Riyadh — killing a bystander, according to Saudi TV — followed soon
after by an explosion when two suicide attackers tried to bomb a troop
recruitment center.
![A screen grab taken from the Saudi news network Al-Ekhbaria shows the interior ministry building in the heart of the Saudi capital Riyadh near which a car bomb exploded, according to witnesses. [AFP]](xin_39120130084999732941.jpg)
A screen grab taken
from the Saudi news network Al-Ekhbaria shows the interior ministry
building in the heart of the Saudi capital Riyadh near which a car bomb
exploded, according to witnesses. [AFP] | The gunmen who set off the ministry blast fled, but then engaged in a
gunbattle with police in northern Riyadh that killed seven militants and wounded
an undetermined number of officers, police said.
The attacks came two weeks after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden called on
his followers to focus attacks on his homeland. While damage to the Interior
Ministry was minor, it was a bold assault on the government body at the center
of Saudi Arabia's war on other Islamic extremists.
Prince Ahmed bin Abdel Aziz, the deputy interior minister, told Saudi TV the
attackers were all Saudis. He said they were "terrorists (who) took a great
risk, because they know that their end is imminent."
The violence sparked a jump in oil prices in afternoon trading in New York,
helping push the price of a barrel of light crude up nearly $2 a barrel to
$43.64.
The first explosion went off around 8:30 p.m. near the Interior Ministry, a
huge modern high-rise in a complex that includes a luxury hotel. Two militants
set off a car bomb by remote control in a traffic tunnel near the ministry,
police said. A limousine driver was killed, Saudi TV said.
Shattered glass littered the ground near the ministry, and several damaged
cars — including a blood-splattered taxi — sat outside.
A half hour later, a second explosion shook the city. Two suicide bombers
tried to drive into a troop recruitment center about five miles away, but they
came under fire from police and set off their explosives prematurely. The two
bombers died, but there were no other reports of casualties.
The two militants behind the ministry blast, apparently joined by
accomplices, later fought with police in a northern district of the capital. The
gunmen, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, holed up in a building and
were killed while fighting with officers who surrounded the structure, police
said.
An Interior Ministry official said several policemen were wounded, but did
not give a specific number. Abel Rahman al Sewilem, head of the Saudi Red
Crescent Society, told Saudi TV that four to five people were injured. He did
not say whether they were police, attackers or bystanders or provide any other
details.
The explosions took place at night, when few employees were at the ministry
or the recruitment center. Past militant attacks, including some claimed by
al-Qaida, appeared designed to maximize casualties, but drew heavy criticism
when many of the dead were Arab and Muslim.
Extremists have staged a number of attacks recently, but none on the scale of
dramatic operations early this year and last year that killed dozens.
Early Wednesday, a suspected militant was killed in Riyadh after tossing a
bomb and shooting at security agents, a security official said. On Tuesday,
another suspect and a bystander were killed in a shootout in the same Riyadh
neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said. One suspect was captured in
that incident.
The extremists' biggest attack recently came Dec. 6, when militants said to
belong to al-Qaida's Saudi branch stormed the U.S. consulate in Jiddah, killing
nine people.
Ten days later, bin Laden issued his audiotape — his first message in years
directed specifically at Saudis. He praised those who carried out the consulate
raid and urged his followers to attack the kingdom's oil installations to weaken
both the West and the Saudi royal family.
Saudi forces have cracked down on al-Qaida — killing and arresting a large
number of its suspected top figures in the country — after the large attacks
early in the year.
In May, gunmen attacked oil company compounds in Khobar, 250 miles northeast
of Riyadh, and killed 22 people, 19 of them foreigners. Earlier the same month,
attackers stormed the offices of an American company in Yanbu, 220 miles north
of Jiddah, killing six Westerners and a Saudi.
On April 21, a suicide bomber struck a government building in Riyadh, killing
five people. In November 2003, a suicide bombing at a Riyadh housing compound
killed 17 people, most of them Muslims working in Saudi
Arabia.
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