JEDDAH, 30 August 2004 — Saudi security forces succeeded in preventing a large number of terrorist attacks in the country, Interior Minister Prince Naif announced here yesterday. He said the attacks that had taken place accounted for only a fraction of the ones which had not. “I can confidently say that what has taken place (among the terrorist attacks) does not exceed five or six percent of what was prevented,” Prince Naif was quoted as saying by the Saudi Press Agency.
The minister said that some of the foiled attacks were potentially worse than the deadly wave of bombings that has rocked the Kingdom over the past 15 months.
“Numerous, more severe attacks were about to take place, using stronger explosives... but security men uncovered these (plans) and foiled them,” he said, addressing a group of citizens who came to express their support for the government’s campaign against terrorism.
Crown Prince Abdullah earlier said that the Kingdom had dealt very damaging blows to the terrorist “masterminds” and was now pursuing the last of the suspected militants. “We directly targeted the heads of the snakes in order to cut them off. Many were killed; some were arrested and the rest surrendered,” the crown prince said.
“We have passed the stage of terrorism. What you are seeing today is the liquidation of the last pockets and hunting for the remaining (terrorists),” Prince Abdullah said and vowed to pursue the terrorists until they had been wiped out. Some 90 people were killed and hundreds wounded, many of them foreigners, in a series of attacks in the Kingdom blamed on Al-Qaeda sympathizers.
A one-month royal amnesty, extended on June 23 to suspected Al-Qaeda extremists, resulted in only six militants turning themselves in. Only one of that number was on the “most-wanted list” issued in December. Eleven suspects on the 26-name list remain at large. The others have either been killed or arrested by security forces or they have surrendered. Saudi authorities, who have rounded up hundreds of suspects, have warned that suspected militants who do not give themselves up will be crushed.
In reference to the Al-Qaeda militants, Prince Naif vowed that the government would continue its campaign to uproot the “deviant faction.” He urged citizens and residents in all parts of the country to stand united in the fight against terrorists. “The present situation demands the unity of our nation, from east to west and north to south,” he said.
The minister’s statement came after reports of the arrest of two wanted militants in the central city of Buraidah, about 320 km north of Riyadh. Security sources said police had tracked the two men and a Pakistani accompanying them to a rest house in Buraidah. Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Mansour Al-Turki said the two militants surrendered without any resistance. He declined to give any details pertaining to the Pakistani.
In related developments, a terror suspect was arrested Saturday in the Al-Zaher district of Makkah. He was caught after coming down from a mountain and asking for water. Another militant was caught the same day in Al-Hurra in Madinah.
