Followup to yesterday's story...
Suspected militants sprayed gunfire inside an oil contractor's Saudi office Saturday, killing at least six people — including two Americans and three other Westerners — and wounding dozens. Police killed four gunmen in a shootout after a car chase in which the attackers reportedly dragged the naked body of one victim behind their getaway car.
| Not an original idea for an atrocity. Or did the perp have a classical bent? |
One of the attackers killed was reported to be on the Saudi kingdom's list of most-wanted terrorists, many of them suspects in last year's suicide attacks on foreign housing compounds in the capital, Riyadh. The two attacks were blamed on al-Qaida. Three of the gunmen worked at the office of ABB-Lummus in the industrial city of Yanbu, 220 miles north of the Red Sea city of Jiddah. Many foreigners are employed by oil refineries and petrochemical plants in the region.
| ... where they have to worry about the locals turning on them. |
The three gunmen used their key cards to enter the building and sneak another attacker through an emergency gate, according to an Interior Ministry source quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency. Witnesses told The Associated Press that police engaged in a shootout with the gunmen outside a Holiday Inn before overpowering them on a downtown street. A statement from the Interior Ministry said police killed three attackers and wounded and captured a fourth, who conveniently died later. "Using different arms, they started firing at the offices of the company's personnel before leaving the scene in a hurry to begin attacking a residential compound," the agency quoted the source as saying, giving no further details. The Interior Ministry statement said the gunmen walked into the offices and "randomly shot at Saudi and foreign employees." The offices are across the street from a petrochemicals plant co-owned by Exxon Mobil and the Saudi company SABIC. After the attacks, police moved in to secure Yanbu's streets with checkpoints throughout the city. There was no word on the motivation behind Saturday's shootings, but U.S. officials warned in recent weeks of possible attacks against foreigners in Saudi Arabia, an important U.S. ally.
| My guess is the motivation for the attack had something to do with some spittle-spewing cleric exhorting the rubes to free the Arabian peninsula of infidels... |
Intelligence has suggested al-Qaida wanted to strike at Saudi oil interests, and bin Laden has called for the overthrow of the Saudi royal family and questioned its Islamic credentials.
| "Nope. Nope. Simply not holy enough." |
The two Americans killed were engineers for ABB-Lummus, Houston-based the energy arm of multinational engineering company ABB. A British ABB employee, a British contractor and an Australian employee were also killed, spokesman Bjorn Edlund said from Zurich, Switzerland. In Sydney, the government identified the Australian as Anthony Richard Mason, 57. A European diplomat told AP that a second Australian also died, but it was not immediately possible to confirm that. There were conflicting reports on the number of wounded, ranging from 25 to 50, and of the number of Saudi victims. The Saudi Press Agency report said a Saudi National Guardsman was killed. The U.S. Embassy said several Saudi security forces were "killed and wounded in their fight with the terrorists," but gave no numbers. |