JEDDAH, 25 April 2004 — The gunbattle between terrorists and security forces in the early hours of Friday has left the injured and bystanders badly shaken, with some saying the scene had a surreal quality.
“I went to Al-Safa neighborhood to buy dinner for my family and took my 11-year-old son with me,” said Muhammad Al-Ghamdi. “All of a sudden I heard the shooting and saw one of the terrorists shooting at me. A bullet hit the car door and injured my leg. I couldn’t believe what was happening. It felt like I was watching an American action movie,” he added.
His son said he was frozen in panic. “I couldn’t move because my father was injured.” The terrorists then ran toward them and hit the son with the butt of their machine gun, throwing him out of the car.
Police told Muhammad not to move until an ambulance arrived. “Then one of the police officers volunteered and took me to the hospital in his car,” he said.
Luckily the doctors there told him his injury was not serious.
Sgt. Abdullah Khareef was injured in the early-morning shootout in Nuzla Yamaniya. “I was in an advance position at the time of the raid early Friday morning,” he said. “I ran into the building after one of the terrorists. He fired a gunshot at me injuring me in the chest.”
Despite his injury Khareef followed the man and shot and killed him. “I was taken from the scene to a nearby hospital where doctors operated on me. I am recovering and am expected to leave the hospital soon,” he said.
Staff Sgt. Ibrahim Al-Zahrani was also injured. “We were chasing the terrorists until they fled into a building,” he said. “One of them was shot and killed in the stairway and the other one went to the roof and barricaded himself inside a room on the top of the building. He was resisting us and we were trying to force our way in to arrest him.”
He fired at the officers and tried to throw a hand grenade at them. But the officers shot him in the hand and he dropped the grenade and blew himself up. “But shrapnel hit my right thigh,” Al-Zahrani said. He is expected to make a full recovery.
Saleh Al-Zahrani lives only 100 meters from the scene of the shooting. “I took cover in my house,” he said. “When it was over, I found my window broken.” Looking around, he found a bullet embedded in the opposite wall, a souvenir of a night of mayhem.
