RIYADH, 30 January 2004 — Five security men were killed yesterday in a shootout with suspected militants in Riyadh’s eastern district of Nassim.
According to an Interior Ministry official, the security forces had been tipped off by the father of one of the suspected militants.
He led them to a villa in the Fayhaa area of Al-Nassim where the militants were hiding. In the exchange of fire, five security personnel and the militant’s father were killed and two policemen injured. Several suspected militants were taken in for interrogation.
“Based on information about the existence of weapons and explosives at the home of a man wanted on security charges, a security unit went to the place, accompanied by the man’s father,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted the official as saying.
“Two hand grenades, two machine guns and five pistols were found,” the official said. “As the unit was completing its task, it came under heavy fire from unidentified gunmen, which resulted in the deaths of five security men and the wanted man’s father.”
Witnesses told Arab News that police arrested some suspects in a house after the shootout, adding that one militant had run away during the gunbattle.
Informed sources also said that police held three more suspects from another house in the district. The same district saw a shootout on Jan. 19 when a man sped off after police tried to check his vehicle’s license plate. “A person accompanying the driver then opened fire at the police patrol,” Riyadh’s police chief said in a statement.
“The driver and his companion later stopped in a crowded area, hijacked the car of a citizen at gunpoint and fled.” According to witnesses, the militants used a citizen as a shield to fend off police fire.
Hundreds of extremists have so far been rounded up in the wake of the May 12 bombings in Riyadh.
An unnamed official told the Reuters news agency that one of those captured yesterday was “very important”, although he said he was not on the list of 24 most wanted suspects released by the Saudi authorities.
Twenty-six suspects were originally named, but one was killed in a shootout with police and another surrendered to the authorities.
The Interior Ministry is distributing booklets in foreign languages with pictures of most wanted suspects in a new move aimed at tracking down terror suspects. The booklets have been published in different languages, including English and French, an Interior Ministry statement said. They contain names and pictures of the suspects.
