U.S. Fears ‘Wave of Attacks’

U.S. officials said Tuesday they are increasingly convinced that the Al Qaeda terrorist network was responsible for the triple bombing that shook this capital city Monday night, killing at least 29 people, including seven Americans, and warned that more attacks are possible.

As U.S. and Saudi officials began surveying the wreckage at the three housing complexes for foreigners that were targeted in the simultaneous attacks, officials said some of the injuries among the 200 wounded were so serious that the death toll was likely to climb.

U.S. officials said nine bombers in the attacks were among the 29 killed but that several additional attackers may still be at large. U.S. intelligence officials also said there have been indications that a wave of attacks was planned on the Arabian Peninsula and suggested that the threat has not passed.

President Bush vowed a swift response.

“These despicable acts were committed by killers whose only faith is hate,” Bush said during an appearance in Indianapolis. “The United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice.”

The acting ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdullah, also condemned the triple bombing in a national television address. The attacks, Abdullah said, “prove once again that terrorists are criminals and murderers with total disregard for any Islamic and human values or decency.”

The Saudi government, he said, “will not hesitate to confront the murderous criminals.”

Some experts speculated that one of the compounds bombed may have been targeted because the company, a unit of Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp., is involved in training the Saudi National Guard, which is charged with defending the royal family.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, touring one of the residential compounds Tuesday, said the attack had “all the fingerprints” of an operation by Al Qaeda, the group led by Saudi renegade Osama bin Laden and implicated in the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. Intelligence and counter-terrorism officials in Washington echoed his assessment.

The attacks “were very similar in nature to the East African bombings,” one U.S. official said, referring to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 231 people, including 12 Americans. “Vehicle bombs. Near simultaneous coordinated attacks. Multiple locations. It certainly has the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation.”

The United States dispatched terrorism experts to the desert kingdom Tuesday to assist the investigation. U.S. officials say the investigation has just begun, but Saudi Arabia is tentatively linking the bombings to 19 suspected Al Qaeda operatives, including 17 Saudis, who have been the subject of a manhunt since a May 6 gunfight in Riyadh.

“The only information we have is that some of them were members of the group that was sought a few days ago,” Prince Turki al Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence who is now ambassador to Britain, said in London.

A State Department official said Tuesday night that all nonessential embassy personnel in Saudi Arabia, and their families, had been ordered to leave the kingdom immediately.

U.S. officials also instructed embassies overseas to prepare for a wave of large-scale and coordinated Al Qaeda attacks, not just in Saudi Arabia -- birthplace of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers -- but in other parts of the world where the terror network has a presence.

“That was the focus today.... What do we need to do to steel ourselves? What steps can we take to stop whatever is already in train, in terms of official and soft targets?” said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said the Bush administration’s concerns focused on dozens of large cities where it will be nearly impossible to protect Americans from attacks on similar complexes housing U.S. workers, or on other “soft” targets such as restaurants, hotels, bars and tourist sites.

“People are very, very worried about a wave of attacks,” the official said. “These things tend to come in clusters.”

The Bush administration asked embassies to immediately assess the vulnerability of official sites and report to Washington which “soft” targets need beefed-up security.

“We are doing everything we can to make sure that all the areas that we think are high-threat areas are maxed out in terms of being prepared and protected,” the official said. “We are asking host governments to up their protection as well.”

Powell toured the site of the devastation at the Vinnell Corp. compound, which suffered the worst damage and where all seven American fatalities occurred.

At that compound, a bomber driving a Dodge Ram truck detonated his explosive in front of a four-story apartment building, bachelor quarters for 70 mostly American military trainers and support staff, U.S. military officials at the site said.

The bomb left a crater about 10 feet deep and 10 feet wide, according to a U.S. general who briefed reporters accompanying Powell.

The death toll would almost certainly have been much higher were it not for the fact that 50 of the 70 left the night before for a desert field training exercise, the general said.

The blasts were highly coordinated. All three went off in different parts of the sprawling capital almost simultaneously between 11:20 and 11:25 p.m., U.S. officials said.

“This was a well-planned terrorist attack. Obviously the [Vinnell] facility had been cased, as had the others,” Powell told reporters after touring the compound. “It shows the nature of the enemy we are working against. These are people who are determined to try to penetrate facilities like this for the purpose of killing people in their sleep, innocent people who were trying to help others.”

U.S. intelligence has been warning for several weeks that attacks might be imminent. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there was a spike in chatter in intelligence channels in recent weeks.

“It was pretty much ... across the board,” Roberts said, adding that there were indications that multiple strikes might be planned. Monday’s bombings, he said, “could be a precursor [to additional strikes], or in lieu of a larger attack.”

But despite a May 1 warning by the State Department, U.S. officials said they had no information on the potential time or target of the attacks.

As of Tuesday, the CIA and other intelligence agencies probing the attacks still had little information on the assailants or the plan and equipment they used.

“It’s too early in the investigation,” one U.S. official said.

At one point Tuesday, the United States thought a fourth bomb had gone off at a U.S.-Saudi private venture, but it proved to be a false alarm, embassy personnel said later.

U.S. officials have not discounted other terrorist groups, or even Al Qaeda offshoots, in the attacks, one official said. But he and other U.S. officials said the evidence indicates the attacks were the work of well-trained and coordinated Al Qaeda cells.

“In terms of pulling the string of what the decision-making chain was, though, we are not nearly there yet,” the official said.

Some counter-terrorism and Middle East experts said the attacks, though clearly aimed at inflicting U.S. casualties, also left Saudis dead or wounded -- and that the attacks were probably also aimed at undermining the royal family.

In his address to the nation, Abdullah said that suicide bombings and the killing of innocents were a violation of Islamic values and a “crime against all of humanity.” Citing scripture from the Koran, he said the attackers’ fate “is damnation on earth and the fury of hell in the hereafter.”

The Saudi leader warned that anyone who tolerates or tries to justify the violence in the name of religion would be considered a “full partner” to the terrorists and “will share their fate.”

The crown prince has been the effective ruler of the kingdom since a 1995 stroke incapacitated King Fahd.

Powell pledged that the United States and Saudi Arabia would only deepen the “mutual effort” to combat terrorism. “This has to be a No. 1 priority not only for the United States but for the civilized world,” he said.

But the attacks also renewed criticism from some Democrats that the Bush administration’s efforts against international terrorism have gone astray.

Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, a Democratic presidential hopeful, charged that such attacks “could have been avoided if you had actually crushed the basic infrastructure of Al Qaeda.”

For months, Graham has claimed the war in Iraq diverted U.S. military and intelligence resources from their ongoing battle against terrorist threats, allowing Al Qaeda to regenerate.

The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has made criticism of the Iraq war a central theme of his presidential campaign, told reporters that Al Qaeda is stronger now than it was a year ago.

“We’ve been engaged in a manhunt to find their past leadership,” Graham said. “But what we’re also finding is that Al Qaeda has a deep farm team and they’re able to replace those who are killed or detained.”

The common denominator at the three sites, according to U.S. Embassy officials, was that they represented joint U.S.-Saudi ventures or housed both Saudis and Americans and other foreigners, including Canadians, Italians and Australians.

The most telling site targeted may have been Vinnell, the Grumman unit involved with the Saudi National Guard. Crown Prince Abdullah is the commander of the guard, an important element of his power base and the most important branch of the Saudi security system.

The National Guard is the “first response” team for the monarchy, the equivalent of the cavalry, according to the U.S. general who briefed reporters.

U.S. officials are speculating that targeting Vinnell may have been a signal to both the United States and the ruling family. Islamic zealots have long tried to undermine U.S. military support for the monarchy.

The American military was the target of two serious terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s.

The other two sites in Monday’s attacks, according to the embassy, were the Al Hamra Oasis Village and Jadawel, both residential compounds.

Twelve thousand Americans live in Riyadh, according to the U.S. Embassy.

About 75% are still here and have not heeded the May 1 U.S. terrorism warning urging Americans to consider departing the kingdom.

Most live in gated communities and compounds for foreigners.

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Wright reported from Riyadh and Miller and Meyer from Washington. Times staff writer Nick Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.