KUWAIT CITY: Saudi Arabia’s interior minister said early Tuesday that al-Qaeda was likely responsible for an attack in the oil-industry city of Yanbu that killed five Westerners and a Saudi and caused dozens of foreigners to leave the country. Interior Minister Prince Nayef, arriving in Kuwait to sign a pact on terrorism intelligence sharing with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, was asked whether al-Qaeda was to blame for the attack. "Yes, but we need time to confirm this,’’ he said.
The attack occurred Saturday, when four men opened fire in the offices of ABB Lummus Global Inc., a Houston-based oil contractor, then tied the body of one victim to the bumper of a car and headed for the Ibn Hayyan Secondary Boys School. Shaken Saudi schoolchildren recounted how the attackers summoned them with gunfire to watch the body being dragged.
Two Americans, two Britons, an Australian and a Saudi died in the attack, which ended with gun battles as police gave chase. All four attackers - who police said were Saudi brothers _, were killed. Dozens of employees of ABB have begun to leave Saudi Arabia, saying they no longer feel safe in the kingdom. The U.S. ambassador travelled to Yanbu on Tuesday to urge all Americans to leave as well. Prince Nayef said Saudi authorities had thwarted ‘scores’ of large-scale terrorist attacks, but gave no time frame or details.
The agreement scheduled to be signed Tuesday in Kuwait City calls for the sharing of intelligence among Gulf Cooperation Council countries, according to the body’s secretary general, Abdulrahman al-Attiyah.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday accused exiled Islamist dissidents of being associated with pro-Israel parties, a day after saying the mastermind of an attack, which killed five Westerners, had links with the dissidents.
"As everyone knows from (Monday’s) interior ministry statement, the leader of the latest attack had links with the renegades (Saad) al-Faqih and (Mohammed) al-Massaari," Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said.
"Although these two renegades have no weight whatsoever, it is known that they have contacts with, and even financing from, sides connected to Israel," he told a news conference here.
The interior ministry statement said that the chief of the four assailants who carried out Saturday’s shooting spree in the industrial city of Yanbu was Saudi national Mustafa Abdul Kader Abed al-Ansari, who was wanted by security authorities.
It said he left the kingdom around 10 years ago and joined Faqih and Massaari, working "with them in their suspicious committee," a reference to the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) formed by the two men in 1993.
Faqih, who like Massaari is based in London, later split from the CDLR to form his own Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) and become the most outspoken Saudi Islamist dissident in exile.
But the Saudi foreign minister did not answer a question by an AFP correspondent on whether Riyadh was holding MIRA responsible for the Yanbu outrage, or whether it might ask Britain to extradite Faqih and Massaari. Prince Saud made his remarks when asked to explain a reference by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz to "Zionist hands" behind terror attacks that have rocked the kingdom over the past year.
"It is no secret that extremist Zionist elements ... are waging a fierce campaign against Saudi Arabia," levelling "false accusations and fabricated slanders" at the kingdom, the foreign minister said.
"The desperate attempt by the terrorist group to undermine security, stability and national unity serves the interests of these Zionist elements, which makes the convergence of goals tantamount to evidence of some kind of link" between the Zionists, the terrorists "and the kingdom’s enemies abroad," he said. |
