RIYADH: Air travelers from 14 countries, including Saudi Arabia, will be subjected to extra body pat-downs and advanced screening of baggage before boarding airliners bound for the United States. The procedures, announced by the US Transport Security Administration (TSA), came into effect Monday following the attempted bombing on Christmas Day of a US-bound aircraft by a Nigerian who, US officials believe, was trained by Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Full details of the new security procedures will be published on the US Embassy website, said an embassy spokesman in Riyadh. The new security arrangement will ensure that all passengers traveling to and from the 14 countries will be patted down and their carry-on luggage searched. They may undergo advanced explosives detection or imaging scans.

Passengers traveling from or through nations listed as “state sponsors of terrorism” — Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria — as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen will face the heightened screening. All of those, except Cuba, are Muslim-majority countries.

The new security check system came in for criticism from Saudi travel and tourism industry leaders. Nasser Al-Tayyar, chief of the Al-Tayyar Travel Group, said: “I don’t support the new security check system. It will reduce air traffic between the US and Saudi Arabia. The new measures will create more difficulties for travelers to and from the Kingdom.”

According to a report, passengers not flying through the 14 nations on their way to the US will no longer automatically face the full range of intensified security that was imposed after the attempted bombing of the Christmas Day flight.

According to the new security measure, pilots will have more discretionary power to insist that passengers not travel with pillows or blankets on their laps during some flights and to limit movement in the cabin during those flights.

The TSA said that it had issued security directives to all US and international airlines operating flights to the US. The directive also increases the use of enhanced screening technologies and mandates threat-based and random screening of passengers on US-bound international flights.

Nigeria criticized the new security measures. Information Minister Dora Akunyili said Nigeria did not have a history of terrorism and such a move could not be justified. “It is unfair to discriminate against over 150 million people because of the behavior of one person,” said the minister.

Many carriers in Europe and Canada complained of widespread delays and other passenger inconveniences. But airlines flying from the Kingdom and Gulf states said they would not be able to assess the full impact of the new rules for a few days.

In Britain, a major international transport hub, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation said he was still trying to decipher the practical implications of the new US rules. Germany increased security at all airports following the failed Christmas Day attack, but authorities said Monday no further measures have been taken since.

In Switzerland, authorities were studying the new US security measures, but so far the old controls were still in place. In Spain, US-bound passengers from countries on the new watch list were not being singled out for body frisks, according to a security official.

Pakistan’s national airline said it intensified security checks for US-bound passengers beginning Jan. 1, even though there are no direct flights to the US from Pakistan.

“It is beyond my imagination what more they could do,” said Nadim Umer, 40, a Karachi-based linen merchant who said he was strip-searched when he arrived in New York last June. “Those who are dying to go to America at any cost can put up with all this inhuman behavior, but I cannot.”

There were 25 million visitors to the United States in 2008 from Europe and Asia, according to IATA figures.

— With input from Barbara Ferguson in Washington