Steve Quayle News Alerts

May 12, 2003
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Terrorist gunmen shot their way into residential Western housing compounds in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, detonated three suspected car bombs, killing at least 10 Americans.

As many as 80 others – including other foreigners – were being treated for injuries at two hospitals.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who arrived in Riyadh today, said: "Terrorism strikes everywhere and everyone. It is a threat to the civilized world."

Earlier, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Robert Jordan told CNN some 40 Americans were among the injured..

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., is suspected to be behind the nearly simultaneous, sophisticated attacks, said sources in Washington and Saudi Arabia.

Many of the residents of the area are Americans. A fourth explosion targeted a U.S.-Saudi-owned company, security officials said.

The attacks came less than a week after al-Qaida warned of an imminent strike.

Explosives-packed cars crashed into each of the three compounds and blew up, U.S. and Saudi officials said. Shortly beforehand, gunfire was heard as the attackers shot their way into the compounds, witnesses and Saudi officials said.

Saudi officials said the attackers shot their way out of the compounds and escaped, although that could not immediately be verified.

Britain’s Sky News quoted a witness as saying, “There were bodies everywhere and blood everywhere.”

Despite Powell's trip, the U.S.State Department advised other U.S. nationals in the country to stay in their homes.

About half of the residents of the compounds, in the Gharnata, Ishbiliya and Cortobah areas, are Western corporate executives and other professionals, a Saudi official said. They are mostly British, Italian and French, but some are Americans, including U.S. government workers and their families.

Saudi officials told NBC News that while they had no hard evidence, they believed the attack was the work of al-Qaida.

Al-Majallah, a sister publication of Arab News, citing an e-mail message from a newly appointed Al-Qaida spokesman, Thabet ibn Qais, said last week that “an attack against America was inevitable.”

Al-Qaida has “carried out changes in its leadership and sidelined the Sept. 11, 2001 team,” the magazine quoted Thabet as saying. “Future missions have been entrusted to the new team, which is well protected against the US intelligence services,” the magazine quoted Thabet as saying. “The old leadership does not know the names of any of its members.”

In 1996, a U.S. complex in Saudi Arabia, the Khobar Towers, was attacked by terrorists, killing 19 Americans and wounding hundreds more.

A U.S. troop withdrawal from Saudi Arabia has been one of the main demands of al-Qaida. The United States said April 29 it was ending military operations in the Kingdom and removing virtually all of its forces after the Iraq war.

Americans have been warned by the State Department to avoid travel to Saudi Arabia due to a rise in concerns about terrorism.

The Saudi Press Agency reported at least 19 men were being sought in connection with suspected terror plots in the country – 17 Saudis, an Iraqi with Kuwaiti and Canadian citizenship, and a Yemeni.

An unidentified ministry official quoted by the news agency said Saudi security forces in search of the suspected terrorists seized a large cache of weapons and explosives in Riyadh last week, the Associated Press said.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32539