JEDDAH, 2 September 2004 — Police have arrested 23 armed robbers involved in a number of burglaries in Taif and Riyadh over the past week, press reports said.
A 19-member gang burgled 47 houses in Taif and taken away valuables worth SR1.6 million. Thieves in Riyadh broke into 40 houses in the city and escaped with valuables including cash, jewelry as well as electrical and electronic appliances, the reports said.
Police said the 19 robbers who committed a series of burglaries in Shihar, Um Al-Arad, Faisaliya, Shifa and Salama districts of Taif were overstayers.
A Saudi resident in Shifa district saw robbers inside his house when he returned home. The robbers opened fire at him and ran away. Luckily, the man did not sustain any injuries, the paper said.
In Salama district, robbers took away valuables worth SR200,000 from a single house. Sultan Sameer Al-Najjar, a resident of Shihar district, said he had lost SR470,000. Police caught the robbers while they were planning to run away from the country after dividing the loot among them.
In Riyadh, several houses in Malaz, Wizarat, Suleimaniya and Rowda neighborhoods were burgled when their owners were either vacationing abroad or gone out. But Suleimaniya police caught four robbers who were involved in most of these burglaries.
Hussein Younus, a resident of Suleimaniya, said the robbery at his house took place while he had gone to work and his wife had gone out to visit family friends. “I was surprised when my wife told me that our house had been burgled and the thieves had run away with valuables after removing its doors,” Al-Riyadh Arabic daily quoted him as saying.
Muwaffek Hasan Al-Ahmar said robbers had destroyed three doors of his house before fleeing with dollars and Jordanian dinars which he had kept inside. “They did not leave any valuable item in my house. They took my television, receiver, recorders and all household appliances,” he said.
Zakariya Ismail, an Arab expatriate, told the daily that his house was burgled while he had gone out with his family on a pleasure trip. “They entered our bedroom and took away SR6,000 and my wife’s jewelry,” he said.
