Between 40 and 50 people were feared dead today after a series of suicide bomb explosions rocked the Saudi capital, Riyadh, overnight.
”It seems we have lost 10 Americans killed, many other nationalities were also killed,” the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, told reporters as he arrived at Riyadh airport earlier today, within hours of the devastating attacks.
”Terrorism strikes everywhere and everyone. It is a threat to the civilised world,” he said.
One Australian man was also killed and another injured in the four bomb blasts that ripped through foreign housing compounds, according to the Australian government.
A Danish newspaper quoted Niels Joergen Secher, a Danish doctor at Riyadh’s King Faisal hospital, as saying between 40 to 50 bodies were brought to his hospital.
Several Britons are among those feared injured in the attacks. An official at the British embassy in Riyadh said: ”We believe there are a small number of British nationals who have been injured, not seriously. We are just confirming their identities at the moment.”
A US official said there were hundreds injured, including German, French and Arab citizens.
Powell was greeted on his arrival by Prince Saud, the Saudi foreign minister, who expressed his sorrow and vowed to cooperate with the United States in fighting terrorism.
”These things happen everywhere,” the prince said.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Powell said it bore ”all the hallmarks” of al-Qaeda and its Saudi-born leader, Osama bin Laden.
Cars packed with explosives were driven into three large housing compounds in eastern Riyadh occupied by westerners, including many Americans and Britons. According to reports, security guards fought a furious gun battle with the terrorists as they tried to prevent one of the attacks.
Witnesses said they had heard three blasts, which sent fireballs into the night sky above the Gharnata, Ishbiliya and Cordoba compounds.
Television pictures showed scenes of devastation as emergency vehicles raced through Riyadh’s streets. Cars and pick-up trucks with badly twisted and still smouldering frames littered the three compounds, which housed villas and four-storey blocks. Many balconies were blown off, their truncated steel girders jutting out.
The bombs gouged massive holes in walls and collapsed roofs. A clock in a large hall inside one building had stopped at 11:28pm, the time of night most witnesses said they had heard the apparently simultaneous explosions.
A European resident of one of the targeted compounds, identified only as Nick, said the explosion occurred shortly before midnight and was so powerful it blew out windows and doors.
”We were sleeping when we were woken up by the sound of gunfire,” he told the Arab News newspaper.
”Moments later, a loud explosion was heard followed by another, bigger explosion.”
The Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, told local newspapers the attackers could be linked to the discovery of a large weapons cache on May 6. The government said it was seeking 19 suspects, including 17 Saudis, a Yemeni, and an Iraqi, it believed were receiving orders directly from Bin Laden and had been planning to use the seized weapons to attack the Saudi royal family as well as American and British interests.
US-Saudi ties were strained after the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, apparently carried out mainly by Saudis loyal to al-Qaeda, whose key demand is for US forces to leave the kingdom, home to two of the holiest Islamic cities, Mecca and Medina.
Two weeks ago the United States said it was removing virtually all forces from the kingdom as they were no longer needed after the war in Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein.
Last night’s attacks throw fresh doubt on the safety of westerners in Saudi Arabia, but they also strengthen the case of six Britons held in Saudi over earlier bomb attacks, a leading legal campaigner said today.
The six, two of whom face possible public execution, were jailed after admitting their involvement in a double bomb attack in Riyadh over the space of a few days in November 2000.
In one of the attacks Briton Christopher Rodway (47) was killed when his car was blown up. The incident was officially linked to a turf war between rival bootleg gangs. But the nature of the men’s televised confessions has led to questions over the authenticity of the admissions amid claims of torture.
Stephen Jakobi, director of the organisation Fair Trials Abroad, said: ”This is one more nail in the coffin of the theory that a lot of drunken louts were busy throwing bombs at each other in territorial wars over their gin stills. It is up to the [British] Foreign Office and the diplomats to do whatever they can as forcefully as they can.” – Guardian Unlimited Â