UPDATE:
On Bomb Blasts in Saudi Arabia Latest !!!! CASUALTIES : More than 90 people were killed. The final figure could rise as the day went on. "These are very preliminary numbers," the official added.
At least 30 -- and possibly as many as 44 -- US citizens were wounded, the official said. The officials, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, gave figures significantly higher than those released earlier by the Saudi interior ministry, which said at least 29 people were killed, including nine bombers and seven Americans, and 194 injured in the blast
EARLIER TODAY....
Casualities: More than 25 killed including 10 Americans.
It was the first major attack on U.S. and Western interests since the war on Iraq. Critics had warned the Iraq war could fan hatred of America across the Middle East and provoke attacks like those of 9/11.
A medical source in the secretive kingdom told Reuters that the total death toll was over 25 with many in intensive care.
Some officials said at least 160 people were wounded, including 40 Americans. Australia said one of its citizens was killed.
Suspected al Qaeda suicide bombers shot their way into housing compounds clearly aimed at U.S. interests on Monday night (12th May).
The housing compounds, which the bombers penetrated shortly before midnight after shooting their way past armed guards, were devastated. Entire facades were ripped off apartment blocks. One complex housed contractors for a U.S. defense firm. The others also were home to many Western expatriates. About 30,000 American expatriates work in Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, many in the oil industry, but also in services such as finance, defense and health. There are also about 30,000 British residents among a large Western community.
Defkafile, an Israeli news website that claimed with links to intelligence sources, described the attack:
- The elite locations populated by foreign expatriates including many Americans that came under attack were Garnata, Cordoba and Ishbiliya.
All sheltered behind concrete walls, electronic detectors and automatic sensors, their two or three gates guarded by armed men who opened cement road barriers only to vehicles whose drivers presented keys with the correct coded electronic signal. Drivers of unidentified cars had to step out and approach the guards who searched them and their vehicles.
The terrorists overcame this formidable security system by having several small teams strike at different points in each estate with ferocious fire and explosive power. While one group killed the guards and smashed the gates, one or more Mercedes packed with explosives and suicide terrorists drove round the other side and rammed the estates’ perimeter walls.
The next team drove into the estates through the hole. Once in, vehicles loaded with cans of gasoline as well as explosives blasted high-rise buildings, killing many of their residents and leveling entire streets.
Another group of terrorists rode into the damaged compounds and massacred survivors by spraying the interiors of still standing buildings with automatic fire, hand grenades and fuel bombs. Some witnesses heard the firing going on 10 minutes after the explosions. When their ammunition ran out, the killers detonated bomb belts.
After the first-wave assaults, few could have survived the fierce heat and vacuum generated in their apartments by the second-wave gasoline blasts which tore the façades off their buildings and sucked them out.
- On May 7, a shootout between Saudi security and a large group of terrorists took place in the Saudi capital. Saudi intelligence sources admit this was the fourth battle Saudi security men had fought with terrorists in Riyadh in recent weeks. The first three were never officially released.
Even in reporting the last clash, the Saudi ministry of interior focused mainly on the large cache seized of explosives, weapons and ammunition, including publicizing the names and photos of the 19 gunmen who got away, 17 of them Saudi nationals. So acute is the security crisis in the Saudi capital that for the first time ever, its police published an appeal for public help in capturing the wanted men, including even a cash reward.
Subsequent leaks from Saudi sources showed the May 7 incident was more dangerous and audacious than first reported: an attempt to assassinate Prince Sultan, the pro-American Saudi defense minister, and his brother, Interior Minister Prince Naif, who is also in command of internal security in the kingdom.However, DEBKAfile could not confirmed this account. The assailants did indeed mount an assassination attempt against “a leading Saudi figure” the day before on May 6. The battle developed after the plot was aborted and the assassins were in flight from pursuit.
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