ALKHOBAR, 7 October — Preliminary reports state that two expatriates, including an American, were killed and four others injured in a bomb explosion in the eastern Saudi city of Alkhobar late last evening.
The bomb had been placed in a busy shopping area in downtown Alkhobar, which was then cordoned off by the Saudi security officers, witnesses said.
The director of police in the Eastern Province told the Saudi Press Agency that the incident took place at about 8.00 p.m. in front of an electronics shop on King Khaled Street in the town.
“The explosion killed two persons and wounded four others. All of them are expatriate workers of different nationalities,” the police director said.
The Reuters news agency, quoting a US Embassy official said one American was killed and another was wounded in the parcel bomb attack. It was later learned that a Briton had suffered superficial injuries and is recovering at a hospital. He has been visited by British officials.
In Washington, US officials said they saw no immediate link with last month’s attacks on New York and Washington.
In London, a British Foreign Office spokeswoman said one Briton was slightly wounded in the blast.
The United States sought to discount the idea that the explosion was linked to the suicide-hijack assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 5,600. “Based on first reports, we believe this is an isolated incident, not related to Sept. 11th. But we are continuing to collect facts,” a US administration official told Reuters.
“One American was killed in the blast and one is in hospital. It appears that a pedestrian threw a parcel bomb into the shopping area... The motives are completely unknown,” the official told Reuters in Riyadh. He said both the Americans were male, but not military servicemen.
The US official described it as an isolated incident. Security officers have launched an investigation into the blast, the police director said.
The casualties would have been higher if the shops on the otherwise busy street had not been closed for Isha prayer. The blast occurred in front of a gift shop at the first crossing of the street. All the injured were immediately rushed to hospital. Some of them are said to be in critical condition. The owner of the gift shop said he was lucky to escape as he had gone to prayer.
This is the fourth explosion to rock the city. A truck bomb attack in 1996 killed 19 US servicemen. In December last year a British citizen was seriously hurt in an explosion. Last May another blast left an American doctor injured.
It was not immediately clear if American or British citizens were the targets of yesterday’s explosion.
An eyewitness said that he saw one of the victims, possibly a man, covered with a blanket. “One of the victims’ hands had been severed by the blast,” he added.
He said that two of the injured were believed to be Britons and two others Filipinos. Another eyewitness told Reuters that police set up checkpoints on all roads leading to King Khaled Street. “They appear to be looking for a specific car believed to be involved in the explosion,” the witness said.
A witness, who was standing close to the shopping complex at the time of the blast, told Arab News that he saw two bodies lying in a pool of blood. A source said some of the wounded were in serious condition.
The witness said the front side of the shopping complex was damaged due to the blast’s impact. Several bomb blasts have taken place in Riyadh and Alkhobar during this year and last year. Three Britons recently confessed on Saudi television to their involvement in the bombings that occurred in Riyadh and Alkhobar between December 2000 and March 2001.
Their confessions were aired after Interior Minister Prince Naif announced that British nationals had been behind the bombings at the Euromarche department store and the Jarir Bookstore in Riyadh and another blast in Alkhobar.
The three men, identified as James Patrick Lee, 40, James Christopher Cottle, 51, and Les Walker, 55, gave detailed confessions with maps on which they pinpointed the three attacks that left two other Britons and an Egyptian injured.
They had “received orders” to carry out the attacks, the three said, but they did not elaborate. Lee, who was at the time working at a military hospital in Riyadh, said he and Cottle had been recruited in November to carry out the blasts.
The three men confessed to the Dec. 15 blast in Alkhobar that targeted British citizen David Brown, an employee of Coca- Cola International, wounding him in the shoulder, throat and stomach.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft said in June that the United States had indicted 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in connection with the 1996 Alkhobar bombing that killed 19 US airmen.
But Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, stated that the US had no right to indict 14 people including 13 Saudis in connection with the bombing that took place in Saudi Arabia. “Every country has the right to question any person on its land, especially in the case of Alkhobar bombing. But the Americans have no right to take any (legal) steps that come under Saudi jurisdiction,” Prince Sultan said.
“The indictments they have made (against the suspects) should be passed to the Kingdom for further investigation as we are the final authority in this case,” Prince Sultan told reporters in Yemen. “We will be happy to cooperate with any country that has information on any person implicated in these explosions,” the prince added.
Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stated that the investigation into the incident was still under way and that no one would be accused until it was completed. Riyadh has also criticized US press reports implicating Iran in the bombing.
