JEDDAH, 26 April 2004 — Yasser Khoury, 20, has been a resident of Al-Safa district’s Abdulrahman Bin Khurash Street for three years. “It has always been a quiet area, very much like any other Jeddah neighborhood,” he told Arab News. “On Thursday at about 9 p.m., I was sitting at home when my brother ran in, shouting that the police had chased a car into our street and had sealed off the area. So we ran outside to watch. What we ended up seeing over the next few hours was something right out of a movie,” he said.
“As we sat in the street watching, my brother and I started talking to some of the police that we knew from the neighborhood. They told us that the police had tried to stop a car at the Tahlia Street checkpoint, but the driver wouldn’t stop. The police began chasing the car in the area surrounding the Shola Shopping Center but at one point, some of the people in the car jumped out and escaped on foot. I am only guessing that those are the ones they caught or killed the next day in Nuzlah. Anyways, the police kept chasing the car right into our street where it stopped in front of an apartment building that was recently built.
“The policeman told us that the people ran from the car into a ground floor apartment. When the police tried to enter the apartment, the shooting started. I think the police didn’t know that they were terrorists and were surprised. Within 10 minutes, more police arrived as well as soldiers from the special forces,” he said.
“From 9 p.m. to about 3 a.m., we watched as police and terrorists exchanged fire. At one point, a hand grenade was thrown from the building at the police but it didn’t injure anybody. In the middle of the shooting, more soldiers arrived. I had never seen soldiers like these. They were like the commandos you see on television. They were highly trained and very well equipped. They took positions across the street on the top of a building being built and started firing down at the apartment from across the street. The shooting would start and then stop, then start and then stop again, back and forth, throughout the night into the early hours of the morning. I saw one policeman get shot. He was picked up immediately and rushed away by other police.
“Just before it was all over around three, the police threw tear gas shells into the apartment and opened fire again. When things had been quiet for about 15 minutes, the commandos stormed the apartment with gas masks and air tanks on their backs. That’s when they brought out the bodies.
“There were three of them. One of them had gunshot wounds in at least 20 places all over his body. Another had been shot in the stomach. I didn’t see the third one because he had already been covered up by the time we got close enough to see.
“Some of the police were attending to the dead men, and some were going into the apartment, coming out with the weapons. There were rocket-propelled grenade launchers, machine guns, handguns, and knives. I have never seen so many guns in one place in my life.
“All this happening so close to where my family lives, as well as seeing it all, has left me feeling a little nervous and jumpy. But for the most part, I still feel safe. This doesn’t happen all the time.”
