RIYADH, 10 November 2003 — Lolita Montealto was almost asleep when she heard several gunshots ahead of a powerful explosion Saturday midnight in front of her employer’s house at the Al-Muhaya compound. Total darkness immediately enveloped the house and she found herself under the rubbles.

“While I was removing the concrete debris slowly and carefully, I was praying for my life,” she narrated by telephone from her bed at the King Khalid Military Hospital as she waited for her operation on a fractured right forearm.

She said it took her 10 minutes to crawl out of the debris. As she rushed outside, she found her employers who also suffered injuries, and her ward, a 3-year old boy, who survived the blast unscathed.

“Before I boarded the police car, which came about 25 minutes after the blast, I saw the employers of my friend Raylin who live next door. I asked for her,” said Montealto, who could not remember her friend’s surname.

“Her lady employer was crying. The husband had blood all over his face and body. But I did not see Raylin and her two wards before I was taken to the hospital,” she added. She said that she saw several wounded persons and some military personnel assisting them.

Montealto said that she had a space under the stairs of the 2-story, 2-bedroom house, apparently used as her “room” for the past 2 years working for her Lebanese employers.

“I believed it was the stairs that saved me from being buried alive,” she said. She prayed that Raylin had also been saved by the stairs.

Montealto said that her friend also sleeps under the stairs. However, she said she was unsure whether her friend was home during the explosion, “because Raylin has a habit of going to bed late.”

“I only hope that Raylin is safe and well with her employers. I hope she will be able to read this article and come out,” she said.

When asked if she has a cell phone number of Raylin so we could call her to confirm her exact condition, Montealto said “our employers never allowed us to have cell phones.”

Aside from Montealto and Raylin, two other Filipinos work as domestic helpers in the compound. The are known only by their first names: Paz (Raylin’s cousin) and Minda.

Labor Attaché Jainal Rasul said he had met Minda and confirmed that she was safe.

As Montealto now recuperates from her operation, she also worries about her passport that had been buried in the rubbles. She is scheduled to spend her vacation in February to visit her parents in Davao del Sur, a province in the southern Philippines.