Saudi government foils ‘terrorist’ attack

THE Saudi government yesterday said it foiled “an imminent terrorist” attack with an overnight raid on a bomb-filled, booby-trapped apartment in the holy city of Mecca that left five suspects and two security agents dead.

It was not clear whether the raid was linked to Saudi Arabia’s crackdown since suicide bomb attacks on May 12 targeting Western residential compounds in the capital Riyadh.

The attacks, blamed on al-Qaida, killed 26 people, including nine Americans. Nine Saudi attackers also died.

At least five people were arrested in the raid, including two Chadians, an Egyptian and a Saudi, a Saudi interior ministry official said.

The unidentified official, whose remarks were carried by the official Saudi Press Agency and state television, said a number of other suspects also were arrested in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, 450 miles west of the capital, following the raid. He did not elaborate.

At about 9:30pm, Saudi security agents broke into an apartment in al-Khalidiya district about three miles from Mecca’s main mosque, where “a group of terrorists were preparing an imminent terrorist act,” the official said.

He did not say what the intended target was and gave no other details on the alleged plot.

Five suspects were killed in a gun battle initiated by the “terrorists,” he said. Two police were killed and five injured; and four bystanders were slightly injured, the official said.

The official said the apartment was booby-trapped with explosives. Some 72 bombs of different sizes were found in the apartment along with a number of weapons, including semiautomatic rifles and knives, and communication devices, bomb-making materials and masks.

Saudi authorities, accused of acting too slowly against Islamic extremism after the September 11 attacks, have taken pains to show their commitment to fighting terrorism in the kingdom, the birthplace of bin Laden and 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers.

In a report yesterday, the Saudi newspaper Okaz had said the violence started when traffic police tried to stop a car whose occupants fired on officers and fled to the apartment building.

The Interior Ministry did not mention the attempted traffic stop.