Al Qaeda Blamed for Saudi Bombing

Saudi Arabian and U.S. authorities on Sunday blamed militants linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network for a car bombing that killed at least 17 people and injured about 120 more at a residential compound for foreigners in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

Analysts and investigators suggested that the targeting of the compound, home to well-off Arab professionals who worked as executives in foreign-owned companies, represented a potential widening of the militants’ war on Western interests in Saudi Arabia -- and on the ruling Saudi royal family.

The bombing, which reduced several buildings in the compound on the capital’s edge to piles of smoking rubble, came on the heels of intelligence warnings of attacks against foreign interests in the kingdom -- particularly Western ones -- and followed a series of violent confrontations in recent days between government forces and suspected militants.

“The people who did this, and I’m very sure they are commanded by Al Qaeda, can’t find a way to get at the targets they want to hit,” said a knowledgeable Saudi official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We have been putting more and more pressure on them, and by hitting a soft target like this one, they are sending a message that they are motivated to strike, and very much capable of doing so.”

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, who was on a scheduled trip in Riyadh to hold talks with senior government officials, said he was “personally quite sure” that Al Qaeda militants were behind the Saturday night attack “because this attack bears the hallmark of them.”

“I can’t say that last night’s attack was the only or last attack,” Armitage told reporters. “My view is that these Al Qaeda terrorists -- and I believe it was Al Qaeda -- would prefer to have many such events.”

Western counterintelligence agencies have been cooperating for some time with the Saudi government, which launched a wide-ranging crackdown on suspected anti-Western militants in the wake of deadly car bombings May 12 that also targeted a housing complex where foreigners lived. Thirty-five people, including nine attackers, died in those blasts.

Saudi police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the fact that the same method was employed in both attacks -- volleys of gunfire unleashed before at least one suicide car bomber rammed his way in -- and the similarity in the type of explosives used, pointed to Al Qaeda, which was also suspected in the May bombings.

Among the dead were a number of women and at least five children, hospital officials said. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Amanda Batt said an undetermined number of Americans were among the wounded, although she said none of the Americans was hurt seriously.

Many of the victims had gathered near midnight Saturday for the late-night feasts that are traditionally held during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, or were out in the streets, greeting neighbors and shopping for food and drink for all-night parties.

Residents described the compound as home to a convivial mix of Arabs from many parts of the region. At least four of the dead and dozens of the injured were Lebanese, and for those survivors the attack recalled the horror of their 15-year civil war.

“We heard a lot of gunfire, and then came a big blast that blurred our vision and blocked our ears, and the door flew in,” said Marwan Dawood, a 42-year-old Lebanese business manager whose family escaped unharmed. “The explosion was so powerful we lost our sense of time and place -- it was like a Beirut night, back in those terrible times.”

The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, which had closed its doors indefinitely one day before the bombing in response to what officials described as credible threats of an imminent attack, dispatched a team to survey the site of the bombing.

The attack -- a powerful initial explosion and at least one secondary blast -- took place less than three miles from the heavily fortified diplomatic quarter outside Riyadh where nearly all foreign embassies -- and diplomats’ residences -- are located. Members of the royal family also live nearby.

A month ago, a tape attributed to Bin Laden, Al Qaeda’s Saudi-born leader, urged more such attacks against Western interests. Bin Laden is a sworn enemy of the Saudi royal family, saying it has betrayed Islam by allowing foreign troops in the country that is home to the most sacred Muslim sites.

The latest attack sent a ripple of fear through the kingdom’s large expatriate community, which includes at least 35,000 Americans. Businesspeople and diplomats from several Western countries held formal and informal gatherings Sunday to exchange information and try to assess the level of threat, according to a Western diplomat.

“I think it’s hard for anyone to feel safe at the moment,” the diplomat said. “There is a threat out there, and it’s hard to define who is doing the targeting.”

Saudi officials and analysts expressed concern that more high-profile attacks like Saturday’s could set off an exodus of expatriates engaged in vital commercial activity. The oil industry in particular relies heavily on foreign workers.

“Striking at people like this, the ones who are needed in many different capacities and who might be afraid to stay if this situation continues, is a way of striking at the government,” said Khaled Maeena, the editor of the Saudi English-language newspaper Arab News.

Still, the targeting of non-Western foreigners was a new twist.

Ordinary Saudis expressed shock and revulsion at an attack aimed at Muslims during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar and a time of fasting, prayer and alms-giving.

The lushly planted compound, dotted with spacious villas, housed large numbers of Americans a few years ago, but nearly all of its approximately 200 homes are now occupied by Arabs of various nationalities, as well as smaller numbers of Europeans, diplomats said.

There was initial speculation that the bombers believed they were striking at a predominantly Western enclave. But analysts and investigators on Sunday discounted that theory, saying it was widely known that few Westerners lived there.

Several law-enforcement officials suggested that the bombing was not the result of outdated intelligence on the bombers’ part, but was deliberately meant to intimidate Arabs seen as cooperating with Western interests and as engaging in what is perceived by many conservative Muslims as a repulsive lifestyle.

Within foreigners’ residential compounds like the one that was targeted, many aspects of daily life stand in sharp contrast to the austere Saudi social mores that prevail outside the walls. Men and women mix socially and share the swimming pool, and alcohol is often available -- all practices that are anathema to religious fundamentalists.

“Al Qaeda wants at the same time to destabilize Saudi Arabia and frighten the Saudi people,” said Miassar Shammari, the Riyadh political editor for the London-based Arabic-language daily Al Hayat. “And making it more difficult for the government to have dealings with the West is one way of doing that.”

In recent months, the Saudi government has come under increasing pressure from the Bush administration to crack down on extremist groups to which it has given tacit support in the past, particularly prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Saudi officials insisted they would press ahead with the anti-militant sweep that has resulted in at least 600 arrests since the May car bombings but has also drawn stiff resistance from sympathizers of Al Qaeda.

Last week, two militants died in a street clash with police in the holy city of Mecca, and another two suspected members of extremist groups blew themselves up to avoid arrest, while a third died in a shootout with police.

A British official familiar with intelligence on militant groups operating in the kingdom said the movement’s shadowy nature made it difficult to develop intelligence on plans and leadership.

“Even if they are generally under the umbrella of Al Qaeda, it’s not always a matter of card-carrying membership in a particular group,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

After Saturday’s bombing, the U.S. Embassy, together with several other diplomatic missions, ordered its personnel to remain within the confines of the diplomatic quarter, a sprawling enclave just outside the capital.

But despite the closing to the public on Friday of the U.S. Embassy and two consulates in Saudi Arabia, even those staffers deemed nonessential were not being sent home -- at least not yet.

“It’ll be a day-by-day evaluation and reevaluation,” said Michael Macy, an embassy spokesman. “But right now, no one’s planning to leave.”

On television talk shows Sunday, top U.S. lawmakers blamed Saudi authorities for not doing enough to stamp out terror groups like Al Qaeda, an accusation also heard on the streets of Riyadh.

“The government is reaping what it has sown with schools that preach Koran, Koran and more Koran,” Zain Aladeidein, a 48-year-old engineer who lives in Riyadh, said bleakly. “It’s not a question of who lives in these compounds, Americans or Europeans or fellow Arabs, it’s the values they symbolize, and that’s what these youngsters are taught to hate.”

But particularly among Saudi youth, the appeal of Al Qaeda and other anti-Western groups is strong.

“The more the Americans tell us how to live, the more people will rebel,” said 22-year-old student Khalid Sultan.

“There is an American philosophy of how to live, and it is not our philosophy.”

In a statement issued in Washington, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar ibn Sultan described the bombing as a “cowardly act by a group of criminals and deviants whose only aim is to spread fear, violence and hatred.”

“Saudi Arabia is at war with these terrorists,” the ambassador said.

“We are driving them out of their hiding places, we are killing and capturing their leaders, and we are choking off their means of support. As a result, their actions grow more desperate and more heinous.”