RIYADH, 19 April 2004 — Eight terror suspects linked to violent clashes with security forces in the capital over the past week have been arrested, an Interior Ministry statement said yesterday.

“Security personnel were able to track down those who took part in the recent heinous acts and who are followers of a devious ideology, and located their hideouts and smoked them out of their holes,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted the statement as saying.

The ministry did not say when or where the suspects were arrested, adding, “In the interest of the ongoing investigation, it is necessary not to mention the identities” of those arrested “or the roles they played.”

The statement also said the suspects fled “hiding their guns and equipment of destruction in residential areas where women and children lived.”

The ministry also clarified that security forces over the last few days defused three vehicle bombs.

One was a red 4X4 GMC pickup, primed with 1,429 kg of a highly explosive ammonia-based substance generally used for construction and mining in the trunk wired to the passenger’s and driver’s seats.

The second car, a white GMC pickup, was primed with 1,389 kg of the same substance.

The third vehicle was a 1991 GMC Suburban the ministry had been looking for since February. The statement said it was booby-trapped with a mixture of explosives including some 1.3 tons of the ammonia-based substance. The vehicle had been repainted and fitted out with fake license plates to avoid detection, the statement said. Police also seized spare car parts, women’s clothing, weapons, ammunition, a PC, home-made pipe bombs and cash left behind by the terrorists, it added.

Late Thursday, militants suspected of killing a security officer and wounding another on the Riyadh Qasim road a day earlier gave police the slip in the rugged area of Wadi Hanifa northwest of Riyadh. The search for them continued throughout Friday with the help of Civil Defense helicopters. It was not clear if the suspects were among the eight arrested yesterday.

In all, suspected terrorists killed six security officers over the last week since a gunbattle between police and militants in Riyadh’s Faiha district last Monday.