RIYADH, 14 April 2004 — Al-Faiha residents living near the scene of Monday night’s shootout between militants and police say they are grateful to be alive and unharmed.
Many still cannot believe that their neighborhood now looks like 1980s Beirut — walls riddled with bullet holes, shattered car windows, blood stains on the floor, and the remains of a blown-up car in the street.
“May God give our security officers strength. They are protecting us against these murderers... Thank God my family and I are safe,” one neighbor said.
The four militants had barged into the villa and blown up their car after being chased by security officers. Many neighbors who had hidden in their houses between Maghreb and Isha on Monday when they heard first the police sirens and then the sounds of the gunbattle now came out into the street to assess the damage.
The Toyota jeep the militants blew up using a rocket-propelled grenade had been taken away, but charred traces remained on the tarmac.
Bullet-ridden cars still flanked the street.
A security source told Arab News that one of the three terrorists holed up in the villa came running out shouting “Allahu Akbar” and opened rapid fire on cars and police officers. He reached the end of the alley and then threw a hand grenade before running back in.
A resident said his relative watched as militants forced the driver of a Caprice out of his car on the main street. “There were three of them. One of them was a bit chubby and was holding a big machine gun and had an ammunition belt round his waist and chest like you see in the movies,” he said.
A neighbor living 30 meters from the villa says he knew the family occupying it very well. “Our kids go to the same school,” he said.
But he added he did not know what happened to them or where they were.
