JEDDAH, 20 June 2003 — Asir police authorities on Wednesday morning arrested two suspicious men they described as driving recklessly.
According to Al-Madinah newspaper, the two men were driving what turned out to be a stolen Toyota with liquor and weapons hidden inside. They abandoned the car near the Al-Ahmar area, where it exploded seconds later.
Meanwhile authorities foiled two attempts to smuggle weapons into the Kingdom along the border with Yemen, Okaz reported yesterday.
In one haul, a border patrol confiscated 15 hand grenades and “10 guns shaped like pens that can be used for assassination operations,” the newspaper said. The weapons were intercepted on Wednesday in southern Jizan.
A day earlier, police in the Baysh area intercepted a car packed with explosives and a variety of weapons, the paper said. Security officials from the area would not reveal the quantity of explosives intercepted, it added.
The newspaper quoted an unidentified security official as saying the smugglers were Yemenis who opened fire at border security officials. The Saudis returned fire, and chased the smugglers into Yemen.
No one was arrested, and it was not clear how many smugglers were involved.
During the past two months, Saudi authorities discovered two weapons caches. They believe that one cache discovered on May 6 in Riyadh belonged to suspects sought in the May 12 bombings in Riyadh that killed 35 people, including the nine attackers.
Last week, another weapons cache was discovered in a raid in Makkah. Authorities said it was to be used in terrorist operations in the holy city.
