MAKKAH, 16 June 2003 — At 9 p.m. on Saturday evening she noticed that police cars and military vehicles had stormed her quiet middle-class neighborhood in the Khaldiya district of Makkah. Shortly afterward there was an explosion, and a gunfight erupted in the streets outside. She felt her building shake. Because her apartment building was on a hill, from her window she could see the gun battle.
“All kinds of police and security cars and people were gathering, and the ambulances arrived just after the first shots were heard,” the Saudi woman, who asked not to be identified, told Arab News.
Her main concern was keeping her children — aged 13, 11 and eight — safe. But as they seemed to be at a safe distance from the fighting, she let their curiosity get the better of them — and they all watched together from the window.
The timing was particularly bad for the children as it was the first day of their final exam week at school, and they were supposed to be studying.
Helicopters circled overhead until the early morning hours of Sunday morning, their spotlights beaming onto the building where the terrorists were holed up, she said. The apartment was being bombarded with bullets.
She could see a big fire explosion in a gas station and a girl’s school, and a car also on fire, she said.
Neither she nor her children got a wink of sleep. In the morning, she took them to school after the blockade of the surrounding streets had been eased.
