RIYADH, 31 May 2004 — A young woman, Malika, who has been married only three months, is in a state of shock and disbelief over the killing of her husband in the terrorist attack on the Oasis Compound in Alkhobar.
Sri Lankan Chandana Pradeep Anthony, 25, was one of the hostages savagely killed by terrorists yesterday. Anthony had been working at the Oasis Compound for the past three years as a chef. When he went on vacation three months ago, he married Malika and returned to the Kingdom, planning a happy and prosperous life.
Another Sri Lankan worker who was among the rescued hostages was full of praise for Saudi commandos who ended his 25-hour ordeal at the Oasis Compound.
Muhammad Ismail Muhammad Muhajireen, who works in the Oasis Restaurant in the compound, counted a total of 41 expatriate hostages. He said the uniform-clad terrorists initially posed as Saudi security forces.
They told the hostages to follow their orders since they would help them escape from the terrorists who came to kill the Americans and Englishmen.
The first thing the terrorists did was to establish the religion of all their captives. They separated the Muslims from non-Muslims by checking the Iqamas of those claiming to be Muslims. “Even after checking the Iqama, they still wanted us to recite a surah from the Holy Qur’an,” Muhammad Muhajireen said.
When this oral exam was over, the terrorists were distracted by the sound of gunfire. The captives took the opportunity to run helter-skelter and hide, locking themselves in three or four rooms on the first floor of the building, where they stayed for the rest of the day and the night.
“We came out when we heard the sound of the helicopter over the building and somehow we got to the rooftop. The security forces then gave us instructions to climb down using ladders they had dropped,” he said.
“On my way to the roof I saw my colleague, a non-Muslim, lying dead on the staircase,” Muhajireen added.
Nalaka Vasantha Kumara, who works as a storekeeper on the compound, was in tears at the hospital when he saw the dead body of his supervisor, Magnus Johansson, 60, a Swedish national. “He was such a good person and he treated everybody like his close friend,” Kumara told Arab News.
