Four explosions apparently targeted at westerners rocked the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh last night, injuring at least 50 people. It is feared that a number of people may have been killed.
According to initial reports, three of the blasts went off in residential complexes housing expatriates living and working in the city, while a fourth attacked the headquarters of the Saudi Maintenance Company, a joint venture between a Washington DC firm and local Saudi partners.
The explosions occurred just hours before the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was due to arrive in Riyadh as part of a Middle East tour. He hopes to galvanise support for the ‘road map’ for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
American officials said that Powell, who spent the night in Jordan, would travel to Saudi Arabia as planned.
According to witnesses, a vehicle carrying explosives was driven into at least one of the housing compounds before being set off. There were also reports of gunfire.
”We don’t know how many are injured, but we received 50 and the number is growing,” an official at the National Guard hospital in Riyadh said.
Police cars and ambulances were at the scene in a matter of minutes and hundreds of riot police and members of the elite national guard also converged on the scene to evacuate residents.
Other witnesses spoke of huge orange blasts filling the sky.
One said: ”There was this massive blast. All the doors and windows were blown in and at that point I was blown onto my back.”
Nick Holt-Kentwell, a Briton living in Riyadh, told Sky News: ”It was about 11.20pm, I was asleep, and we heard this massive explosion. At first of course you think it’s thunder and everybody comes out of their houses and then we realised after a short time that it was actually an explosion on another compound which was very close to us.”
A Saudi official said that a black Chevrolet Caprice sedan had been crashed into a residential compound in Garnata, an eastern suburb.
In Washington, a US official said: ”These are residential complexes that have large American presences.” There were suspicions that al-Qaeda might be behind the explosions, he said, but it was ”too early to tell”.
The attacks followed a warning earlier this month by the US state department, advising Americans not to travel to Saudi Arabia because of intelligence reports of possible attacks.
Saudi security forces last week uncovered a large cache of weapons and are searching for 19 men, including 17 Saudis, in connection with suspected terrorist plots. Militants have twice launched attacks on US targets in Saudi Arabia since the 1991 Gulf war.
The kingdom has become a breeding ground for anti-American sentiment — 15 of the September 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, is a Saudi and has demanded US withdrawal from the kingdom.
The US recently announced plans to pull most of its military out of Saudi Arabia in the hope of easing tensions within the Arab world.
The American presence in the kingdom, home to two of the holiest Islamic cities, Mecca and Medina, is considered offensive by many Muslims. – Guardian Unlimited Â