Bombs Target Westerners in Saudi Arabia

Explosions rattled the Saudi capital of Riyadh late Monday in what appeared to be coordinated attacks on three residential compounds known to house many Americans and other Westerners, U.S. officials said.

Initial reports from witnesses said there were numerous casualties, including deaths, in the attacks, which came on the eve of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s planned visit to the country.

At least one death was confirmed by a source in the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, while other reports put the number at more than three. “We know this is going to be bad, we just don’t know how bad,” the official said.

U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Robert W. Jordan told BBC radio today that 10 people may have died.

“There are preliminary reports of upwards of 40 Americans in hospital and considerable numbers of other nationalities in hospital and very likely fatalities in the two to six to 10 range,” Jordan said.

Suspicions among U.S. counter-terrorism officials centered on the Al Qaeda terrorist network, headed by Osama bin Laden. Last week, Saudi authorities engaged in a shootout in Riyadh with suspected members of a terrorist cell believed to have links to Al Qaeda.

As part of that operation, Saudi officials uncovered a cache of explosives and weapons and said the cell appeared to have been plotting large-scale attacks. None of the 19 suspects identified by Saudi authorities had been captured, and U.S. officials said the cell may have been behind this week’s bombings.

“I’m not saying for sure this was connected, but that’s where the smart money is,” one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There were a lot of Al Qaeda people [the Saudis] were trying to get.”

At a morning news conference today in Amman, Powell attributed the bombing to terrorists, most likely members of Al Qaeda.

The bombing “has the earmarks of Al Qaeda, especially in the attempts to kill innocents,” Powell told reporters before continuing his trip.

“Al Qaeda has been weakened but not destroyed,” he said before the flight to Saudi Arabia. “All it means is that we have to stay on guard.

“We will not shrink from the tasks before us,” he said.

According to Saudi officials, the four explosions began shortly before midnight.

“The three explosions that occurred in eastern Riyadh were suicide bombings,” Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz told the Al Riyadh daily, the newspaper’s Web site reported.

“They were set off by cars stuffed with explosives that were driven into the targeted compounds,” he said.

The last blast was heard at the headquarters of Saudi Maintenance Co., a joint U.S.-Saudi private venture, according to Associated Press.

The CIA was still collecting information on the bombings but noted that agency officials had been alarmed in recent weeks by fresh indications that terrorist groups were planning attacks on American targets in Saudi Arabia.

That flurry of intelligence prompted the State Department to issue a travel advisory May 1 warning that “terrorist groups may be in the final phases” of planning attacks there.

In Washington, an FBI official said the bureau had deployed a team of agents stationed in Riyadh to investigate the bombings in hopes that responsible parties and any potential links to Powell’s visit could be identified.

“You have to take a look at everything: You have Powell traveling in the area, the recent State Department warning and last week’s plot,” the FBI official said.

He said bureau officials in Washington were scrambling to get damage assessments and the names and conditions of Americans who might have been hurt or killed in the blasts.

Officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington could not be reached for comment Monday evening.

A Western security official who lives at one of the bombing sites said the targets were upscale residential compounds that house Americans and other Westerners.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was out of the country at the time of the attack but said he had been given several briefings by witnesses.

“I can tell you there have been three compounds attacked: the Al Hamra, Jadawel and Vinnell compounds,” the security official said. “We have no idea how many were killed, but I know that there are multiple injuries at the compounds.”

Al Hamra Oasis Village and Jadawel are two of the most exclusive compounds in Riyadh, home to corporate managers and executives and their families. The Vinnell compound includes residences and offices of Vinnell Corp., a Northrop Grumman Corp. subsidiary that provides advisors to the Saudi military.

Frank Moore, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman, a Los Angeles-based defense contractor, said he couldn’t confirm if any employees of Vinnell were injured or even if there was an explosion at the firm’s compound, where about 800 employees live and work. Of those, about 300 are U.S. citizens.

Witnesses confirmed that in at least two of the blasts, bombs were detonated in cars and that private security guards and suspected terrorists exchanged gunfire, the official said.

At the Al Hamra, the security official said, witnesses reported “a lot of injuries” and said villas had been leveled and the recreation area flattened. “Almost all the villas had their windows blown,” he said.

There were some deaths, the official said. “One man I was talking to said his wife’s best friend was dead. I could hear her in the background, hysterical.”

The security official said the bomb was detonated inside a car that contained as many as four men, according to the accounts he received.

“One car followed a compound car into the area, and there was a gun battle trying to stop the car from getting any further. They were already in the compound, [the guards] chased them around the compound and when they got to the center, I guess they felt like they got to where they needed to be or couldn’t go any further, and detonated it,” the security official said.

Sheridan Fakhri, who lives at the Al Hamra, said two deaths had been confirmed so far. Both bodies were found in a gymnasium at the center of the complex, she said.

Westerners living in Saudi Arabia have been warned for months about possible terrorist attacks. Many had moved their families back to the United States and Europe after their companies said they were unable to guarantee their safety. About 12,000 Americans live in Riyadh, about three-quarters of whom are still in residence, a U.S. Embassy official said. Most work for corporations in the capital.

The compounds struck Monday are similar to large gated communities in the United States, with furnished units including detached executive houses, two- and three-bedroom duplexes and low-rise apartment buildings.

Cars entering the compounds are checked by guards at gates staffed around the clock. The guards use mirrors to look for bombs in the cars’ undercarriages.

In recent months, security personnel have patrolled areas outside the compound walls to determine whether the sites were under surveillance.

By living in such compounds, residents have a more Westernized lifestyle than they would living in homes or apartments in the city.

Residents of the compounds that were attacked are primarily upper-level and executive managers of companies operating in Riyadh. U.S. Embassy personnel are housed in the Diplomatic Quarter, a heavily guarded part of the city where all the embassies are located, and the U.S. military in Riyadh is at Eskan Village, a base far from the city limits.

Saudi police who have been searching for the 19 suspected terrorists involved in last week’s shootout discovered items including more than 800 pounds of highly explosive paste, seven AK-47 machine guns and 2,500 bullets, the Saudi Interior Ministry said.

Saudi officials said most, if not all, of the suspects had attended Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Among them are 17 Saudis, an Iraqi holding Kuwaiti and Canadian citizenship, and a Yemeni.

Anti-American violence in Saudi Arabia has been a growing problem since the mid-1990s. In 1995, five Americans and two Indians died in a bomb attack on a U.S. military complex in Riyadh; the following year, 19 American soldiers were killed when their apartment building in Dhahran, in eastern Saudi Arabia, was bombed.

Last week, an American civilian who worked at a Saudi naval base was shot and wounded by an Arab man in a naval uniform.

The public attempts in the last week to capture terrorism suspects have been seen in the United States as an encouraging sign of commitment by the Saudi government, which has been criticized by Washington as failing to confront extremist elements since Sept. 11.

The kingdom is the birthplace of Islam and of Bin Laden, who has cited the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia as provocation for terrorist strikes on American targets. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi.

Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that most of the 5,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia would leave by the end of the summer. The presence of U.S. troops has been a major irritant to the kingdom’s rulers, who face strong anti-American sentiment from the population

A U.S. official said Powell would hold talks with Crown Prince Abdullah and others.

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Miller and Meyer reported from Washington and Wright reported from Amman, Jordan. Times staff writers Leslie Hoffecker in Washington and Monte Morin and Peter Pae in Los Angeles also contributed to this report, as did Times wire services.