BURAIDAH/RIYADH, 14 April 2004 — Four policemen were killed in a series of clashes with suspected terrorists on the Riyadh-Qasim Highway yesterday as security officers defused two truck bombs that were ready to be used in attacks in the capital.
The Interior Ministry confirmed the death of the four policemen in machine-gun fire and said the attacks were carried out by “members of a deviant minority”, a veiled reference to Al-Qaeda sympathizers.
On combing the region, security authorities “seized two truck bombs ready to be used as well as a third car containing arms,” a ministry spokesman said. A security source said the car bombs were ready for attacks in Riyadh.
Yesterday’s ambush on policemen came after a security man was killed and a militant gunned down during a clash in the eastern Al-Faiha neighborhood of Riyadh on Monday. The ministry spokesman said yesterday’s events were “an extension of Monday’s incident in the Al-Faiha neighborhood.”
The security source said police discovered the car bombs at dawn in the desert region of Al-Shamasiya, nine kilometers north of Umm Sedrah checkpoint on the road between Riyadh and Qasim.
The remote Umm Sedrah area is about 45 kilometers east of Buraidah, the capital of Qasim region.
According to the source, the two cars were spotted 20 kilometers north of Umm Sedrah checkpoint where an officer, identified as Lt. Talal Al-Manie, and a member of the security forces, Jarallah Al-Jarallah, were killed. The two policemen, who were in a car, were attacked by two occupants of a van near a mosque and a petrol station, the source said. It was not clear if this was the same van which three militants commandeered after Monday’s shootout.
The assailants drove on until they came upon another police car, 20 km further north, which they attacked, killing the two occupants, policemen Turki Ghuraf Al-Otaibi and Salman Rashid Al-Moussa, of Unaizah police station. The ministry spokesman said the two policemen came under gunfire from militants who acted like pedestrians looking for help. “When the policemen stopped their vehicle, the militants showered them with gunfire,” he added.
The gunmen fled in the patrol car, which was spotted by police helicopters when they discovered the two car bombs, the source said. The militants used rocket-propelled grenades, “showing the ferocity of the extremists, who would rather die than surrender”, an analyst in Riyadh said.
The spokesman also said police uncovered a number of terrorist hide-outs and seized weapons while combing the region.
There were unconfirmed reports that Bandar Al-Dakheel, who is among the 26 wanted terrorists, was among the militants chased by police in Riyadh on Monday.
Police beefed up security in Qasim after the shooting incidents. Roadblocks and checkpoints have been set up on the main roads and on the Qasim-Riyadh Highway.
Police also cordoned off a farm in the Qasim region where suspected militants were hiding. A man from Unaizah said policemen Al-Manie, Al-Otaibi and Al-Moussa were from the town while Al-Jarallah was from Mudneb, located south of Unaizah.
Funeral prayers for the dead policemen will be held at Sheikh Bin Othaimeen Mosque in Unaizah today after Dhuhr prayers.
The policeman who was killed in the Faiha clash has been identified as Qadeed Al-Qahtani, who is survived by his wife and four children. He died inside his patrol jeep, which the militants attacked using rocket propelled grenades. Several suspected militants as well as security personnel have been killed in similar shootouts, particularly in Riyadh, since a series of suicide bombings in the capital killed 52 people in May and November 2003.
Hundreds more terror suspects have been rounded up across the Kingdom, and authorities have reported seizures of huge caches of weapons and explosives.
In their intensified hunt for suspected Al-Qaeda supporters, security forces on March 15 gunned down a Yemeni described as the militant network’s head of operations for Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf.
Khaled Ali Haj, who ranked third on the most-wanted list, was suspected of having ordered the Riyadh attacks, according to security sources.
The list has since gone down to 22 after three militants figuring on it were killed in clashes with security forces and one surrendered.
Abdul Aziz Al-Muqrin, a Saudi who reportedly succeeded Haj, issued a statement last Wednesday justifying the mutilation of the bodies of American contractors killed in the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah late last month.
The US Embassy in Riyadh meanwhile urged American citizens to be on the alert. An embassy spokesperson said Americans should be vigilant because the US government “continued to receive indications of possible terror attacks” in the Kingdom.
