Suspected Islamist militants tried to attack a major oil facility in Saudi Arabia for the first time on Friday, ramming cars packed with explosives into the gates of a vast processing plant in the country’s east. The attack was foiled when guards opened fire on three cars. Two guards were killed, and two others wounded.
The attack, on the Abqaiq oil facility, came less than three months after a message from al-Qaeda urging militants to attack oil installations in Muslim countries appeared on the internet. Oil prices rose by more than $2 a barrel on world markets following the incident.
”Three cars rammed the first of the three sets of gates protecting Abqaiq and when security shot at them all three cars exploded,” said Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security adviser. All occupants of the cars were killed but it was unclear how many were inside, he said, adding that the incident occurred just more than a kilometre from the main entrance to the facility.
”The attack was stopped at the first security cordon. The cars were not able to get in … no blast occurred within the plant perimeter,” another adviser told Reuters.
Obaid said security was already tight because attacks had been expected. Three security officers were killed and 10 more wounded, he said, but gave no further details of how the casualties occurred.
A statement from the Saudi Oil Minister, Ali Naimi, did not mention deaths but said two guards were critically wounded.
Amid conflicting accounts, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television said the flow of oil halted briefly after a pipeline was damaged. Naimi denied this, saying the attack caused a small fire but it was brought under control and did not affect operations.
A Saudi journalist who arrived quickly at the scene said only one car exploded initially and that the guards killed two people in a second car before it blew up. Guards then fought for two hours with two other militants outside the facility, he told The Associated Press. He said he saw workers repairing a pipeline.
Abqaiq is situated 72km south-west of Dammam, the major oil hub on the Gulf coast. The facility, which is thought to be the biggest in the world, handles about two-thirds of Saudi Arabia’s oil output, according to the United States Department of Energy.
In an interview posted on the internet in December, Ayman al-Zawahiri — regarded as the number two in al-Qaeda — called on militants ”to concentrate their attacks on Muslims’ stolen oil, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam”.
The attack came after a period of apparent success for the Saudi authorities in tracking down militants.
Last April, Abdulkarim al-Mejjati and Saud Homoud al-Oteibi, two of the kingdom’s most wanted suspects, were reportedly killed by security forces in three days of clashes in al-Ras, about 320km north-west of the capital, Riyadh. Twelve other militants also died in the battles.
In August, security forces in Medina killed Saleh al-Awfi, believed to be the leader of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.
Attacks were launched on offices of oil companies in the summer of 2004, but Friday’s attack was the first to target directly a production facility in the world’s largest crude producer. — Guardian Unlimited Â