- It was the latest in a series of ruthless attacks on
foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, targeting the employees of foreign oil
companies. In each case the gunmen have aimed to slaughter as many non-Muslims
as possible.
-
- At 7.30 on Saturday morning, they chose the city of Khobar,
an important hub of the Saudi oil industry. As many as seven gunmen wearing
military-style uniforms opened fire at the Al-Khobar Petroleum Centre building,
which houses offices of western oil companies in the Gulf city. They also
sprayed with gunfire an oil industry compound housingoffices and apartments
of the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation (Apicorp). Three of its employees
and the son of another - a 10-year-old Egyptian boy on a school bus - were
killed.
-
- Michael Hamilton, a British manager at Apicorp, was shot
dead in his black saloon. His mobile phone was left on the front seat as
his bloodied body was tied to a car by the gunmen and dragged through the
streets before it was dumped near a bridge. It had chilling echoes of an
incident at the beginning of the month when the body of an American was
dragged through Yanbu, a Saudi city on the Red Sea, in an attack by five
militants on a petrochemical facility. The events surrounding the initial
attack in Khobar are confused. But if, as suspected, al-Qa'ida is involved
then it has returned to the area where - a few miles away in Dhahran -
in 1996 it set off bombs to destroy a US military compound, killing 19
American soldiers.
-
- After the shootings at the two compounds the gunmen fled
to the Oasis Residential Resorts. There, they seized between 45 and 60
hostages in a walled-off district which houses executives and is too expensive
for ordinary oil workers to live in.
-
- It contains restaurants, an ice rink, spas, swimming
pools a pastry shop and gardens. It also has 200 villas, 48 apartments,
195 studio apartments as well as a hotel and luxury apartments. Security
companies recommend foreigners to live in such places, which are considered
more secure and where vehicles entering can be checked. But the existence
of these compounds also provides convenient targets for groups that want
to kill foreigners.
-
- Once the gunmen had taken over Oasis, they started to
hunt down non-Muslims to kill or take hostage. Abu Hashem, 45, an Iraqi-American
engineer, was leaving for work when he heard the sound of gunfire. He went
back home and took his wife and two children to a neighbour's house for
safety. Abu Hashem noticed that there were blood stains on the floor of
his house and went looking for security guards. Instead he found four Saudi
men with short beards and whose ages he said were between 18 and 25. A
revealing conversation followed. Abu Hashem asked the men: "Are you
guards?" They said they were and asked him if he was a Muslim. When
he said he was they said: "Give us proof." Abu Hashem knew they
could not be regular security guards and took out his identity papers which
showed he was a Muslim but also revealed that he was an American of Iraqi
origins.
-
- When the gunmen said he was an American, Abu Hashem said
this was true but he was an American Muslim. To his relief they said, "we
do not kill Muslims" and politely apologised for breaking into his
home. They then lectured him on Islam and told him: "We are defending
our country and we want to take it from the non-believers" - probably
a reference to the royal family of Saudi Arabia.
-
- Another Muslim resident, Salam al-Hakawati, 38, a Lebanese
corporate finance official, hid with his wife and two-year-old son upstairs
when they heard gunfire. He heard people searching rooms downstairs and
saying "this is a Muslim house" when they saw Koranic verses.
A man with a machine gun came upstairs and said to him in Arabic: "We
only want to hurt Westerners and Americans. Can you tell us where we can
find them here?"
-
- By now gunmen had killed at least 16, including Mr Hamilton,
an American and an Italian cook. The Saudi security forces stormed the
Oasis compound, a walled complex, and surrounded the attackers on the sixth
floor of a high-rise building. During the night they tried to rescue hostages
but retreated when they found booby traps. At night the gunmen also started
to kill hostages, who are by now said to have numbered 25.
-
- One of those who survived, a Jordanian computer engineer,
Nijar Hijazin, said: "The nine had their throats cut by the kidnappers
when they tried to escape at night by the stairs."
-
- At no time did the hostage-takers ask to negotiate according
to Jamal Khashoggi, a media adviser to the Saudi Arabian ambassador to
London. He said: "They didn't have any demands, they just started
killing people." He said that the nine hostages who were killed were
in addition to the 16. The Saudi authorities say it was the killing of
hostages which led to the decision to storm the building.
-
- Saudi newspapers said that one body had been thrown from
the top of the building and others had been mutilated.
-
- Just after sunrise some 40 black-clad Saudi commandos
dropped into the compound from three helicopters. There was gunfire and
some 50 hostages were freed. Saudi security officials said the gunmen's
leader had been arrested, two killed - several escaped.
-
- There was confusion yesterday about the identity and
the number of those killed. Nine Saudis and eight foreigners are reported
to have died in the first clashes before the attackers moved to Oasis.
A manager in the compound said three foreigners, including a Briton and
an American, were killed in the rescue. A security source confirmed hostages
had died. Others were being treated for exhaustion and dehydration.
-
- At about the same time as the high-rise was being stormed,
a man who claimed to be Abdul Aziz al-Moqrin, identified as the chief of
al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia, claimed responsibility for the attack in a tape
posted on the internet on a a website noted for militant Islamic comment.
He identifies by nationality the foreigners who were killed, although he
says it was an American whose body was dragged through the streets. Moqrin
denounces the Saudi government for selling out to the US and providing
"America with oil at the cheapest prices ... so that their economy
does not collapse".
-
- The recording may have been made inside the besieged
building because it ends with volleys of shots and men shouting: "Open
the door quickly."
-
- PREVIOUS ATTACKS
-
- 25 June 1996: 19 US servicemen killed and 372 wounded
by a car bomb at Khobar Towers, a military housing complex, in Dhahran.
Members of Saudi Hizbollah, and the government of Iran, blamed.
-
- 22 April 2003: Car bomb at Saudi security HQ in Riyadh;
four killed, 150 hurt. The al-Haramain Brigades, a group linked to al-Qa'ida,
claimed responsibility.
-
- 14 May 2003: More than 30, including eight US citizens,
killed, 200 hurt in suicide bombings at three compounds in Riyadh. The
US said the attacks showed "fingerprints" of al-Qa'ida.
-
- 1 May 2004: Two Americans, two Britons, an Australian
and a Saudi guard who worked for a US contractor shot dead in Yanbu. Al-Qa'ida
claimed responsibility.
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=526644
|