JEDDAH, 1 September 2004 — Saudi security forces killed a terrorist and wounded three others on Monday evening. The men drove through a security checkpoint in the eastern city of Al-Ahsa, the Saudi Press Agency said, quoting an Interior Ministry spokesman.
“The car with four men crashed through a checkpoint. Police then opened fire on them, killing one and arresting the three others,” Brig. Mansour Al-Turki said. The shooting took place while police were combing an area where Al-Qaeda sympathizers were reportedly hiding.
“The car’s lights were turned off and it was heading directly at the security men so they shot at it,” the spokesman said. “This led to the killing of one passenger and the wounding of the others who were arrested and are being questioned,” he added.
During the search operation, the police also arrested another terrorist and seized two cars which had been under the surveillance of security agents, the official said. The spokesperson did not clarify whether the suspects were on the list of the Kingdom’s 26 most-wanted terrorists.
The incident in Al-Ahsa took place a few hours after an unidentified gunman opened fire at an American Consulate vehicle in Jeddah. Security spokesman Turki downplayed Monday’s attack on the US Consulate vehicle. “First indicators show the attack was of a criminal nature rather than a terrorist one,” he said. The vehicle came under fire outside a bank in Jeddah. Its two passengers — a US Marine guard and a local driver — were not hurt, the US State Department said. Turki said the fact that the car was targeted outside a bank using a small personal weapon makes it possible to suspect that the attack was an attempted robbery. “There is still no concrete evidence to confirm whether or not the shooting was an act of terror,” Agence France Presse quoted him as saying.
Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, quoted witnesses describing a bearded, dark-skinned man in traditional Saudi dress as the attacker “who fled into the heavily populated residential quarter of Ruwais.”
Quoting the witnesses, the Arabic daily said, “He walked into a local shop offering to sell a mobile phone, only to rush afterward to the main road, firing four shots at a passing vehicle.” Turki, who said security forces were still searching for the man in Jeddah, said information so far gathered from eyewitnesses was insufficient to “establish his exact description.” A Western diplomat, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said it “sounds logical” to assume that there was a criminal motive behind the attack, but refrained from commenting on the Saudi investigation. The US Consulate in Jeddah, which was closed shortly after the attack, reopened yesterday morning, a spokesperson at the US Embassy in Riyadh said. Following the incident, the consulate renewed earlier warnings to US citizens in Saudi Arabia that they should “depart the country... urging Americans who remain to exercise a high level of vigilance,” US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday.
