India has asked Saudi Arabia to sympathetically review the case of an Indian worker after a court ordered that his eye be gouged out for accidentally blinding a Saudi national in one eye during a scuffle.

Saudi authorities gave safe passage to three al-Qaida gunmen after the they killed 10 of the hostages on the advice of the US, a senior security official said.

Security fears left foreign businesses reconsidering whether to stay in Saudi Arabia, while jittery world oil markets opened today with strong price increases in the first significant trading since a terror attack targeting Western oil workers left 22 people dead in the Saudi oil hub.

Saudi authorities are hunting for three suspected al-Qaida terrorists who used hostages as human shields to escape after a weekend assault on a residential complex that killed 22 people, mostly foreign oil workers.

Saudi authorities searched an hotel in a residential compound today for clues left behind by suspected al-Qaida militants – three of whom were on the run - after a shooting rampage and hostage standoff that killed 22 people, most of them foreigners.