".....Kill 'em all, ...let Allah sort 'em out...........
Seven militants killed in marathon Saudi gunbattle
Al-Qaeda suspects besieged in house
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
RIYADH: Seven suspected Al-Qaeda militants were killed in a marathon gunbattle with Saudi security forces which has raged for one-and-a-half days in the north of the kingdom, the Interior Ministry said Monday. Seven members of "the deviant group" - official terminology for Al-Qaeda suspects - were killed, and an eighth was critically wounded, in the clash in Al-Rass in the Al-Qassim region, some 320 kilometers north of Riyadh, the ministry said in a statement.
A number of security men were slightly wounded and security forces were continuing to "cleanse" the scene of the clash, it said, suggesting that the latest gunbattle in two years of confrontations with Islamist militants was not over.
The gunbattle began when security forces deployed in the area early Sunday to track down a group of suspects holed up in a residential building and came under fire from automatic weapons, the ministry said in the statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
The suspects also used hand grenades, but security forces "silenced the sources of fire" and evacuated the area, which includes a girls' school, of residents, it said.
The ministry did not identify any of the dead or the wounded suspect, who was arrested and taken to hospital, promising more details later.
It was the first official account of the gunbattle, during which security forces laid siege to the militants holed up in the building, according to residents.
Saudi-owned media and some residents of the area had put the death toll among militants at eight.
Residents said security forces deployed in large numbers at the site as helicopters hovered overhead and gunfire and loud blasts were heard in the area.
The clash started at around 8 a.m. on Sunday.
"The operation is continuing. The security forces have surrounded them. There is still gunfire from the besieged building," Interior Ministry spokesman, Brigadier Mansour al-Turki said earlier.
Al-Qassim governor Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdel Aziz said late Sunday that three militants were killed and 15 security personnel had been wounded, two of them seriously.
A campaign of bombings and shootings blamed on Al-Qaeda has killed 90 civilians in Saudi Arabia since May 2003, according to official figures.
Thirty-nine members of the security forces and 99 militants have also been killed, including the seven killed in the latest gunbattle.
Many of the attacks have targeted Westerners.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is Saudi-born and 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States were Saudis.
The unrest in a country which is by far the world's largest oil producer has raised fears about the security of the West's supplies but Saudi authorities insist that the oil fields, concentrated in the east of the kingdom, are well protected.
The latest confrontation came less than three weeks after Al-Qaeda's local chief, Saleh al-Oufi, reemerged in recordings attributed to him on an Islamist Web site to voice support for the network's Iraqi branch and call for attacks on "crusader" targets in the region. - AFP
dailystar.com.lb
. |
