'All the doors came in and I was lying on shattered glass'

THE charred wreckage of an overturned truck lay in the rubble that was once the front of a four-storey building. A US flag dangled from the roof and the smell of explosives lingered in the air.

Seventy Americans employed by the Vinnell Corporation, a company with a contract to train Saudi military and civilian officials, lived in the building.

By chance, 50 of the Americans were on a training exercise and away from the complex. The building was in one of three housing complexes in the Saudi capital hit by suicide car bombers on Monday night. Attackers shot their way into the compounds and then set off the explosives.

Witnesses reported hearing gunfire moments before one of the cars exploded. One survivor, John Gardiner from Kinghorn, Scotland one of 30,000 Britons living in Saudi said the blasts were "absolutely terrifying".

"All the doors came in, the external doors, the internal doors, all the windows, and the next think I knew I was lying on my back in shattered glass," he said. The blasts tore through apartment buildings and family houses.

The force of the explosions sheared the facades off of five and four storey buildings. Heaps of rubble and blocks of upended concrete surrounded twisted steel bars and knocked downed palm trees.

A sombre US Secretary of State Colin Powell, surrounded by a phalanx of aides and security guards, visited the scene for about 10 minutes before departing for Moscow.

"This was a well-planned terrorist attack," he said. "It certainly has all the fingerprints of an al-Qaida operation." The bombed building was in the north-east of the Saudi capital.

A US general said the truck and a sedan drove up to the gate of the complex at about 11.20 pm. With a brief burst of gunfire, the men in the two vehicles killed the sentries, then pushed the button that opened the iron gate. The truck drove up to the housing complex and its explosive cargo was detonated.

Briton Nick Holt-Kentwell, a complex resident, said he and fellow expatriates had been acutely aware of the dangers in the last few months.

"We've been taking the advice of the embassy not to go into the shopping centres but generally speaking there has been a greater police presence in Riyadh," he said.

The al-Hamra compound, which suffered one of the worst attacks, was hidden behind 20ft high walls. Surveillance cameras were posted along the walls.

Most of the homes in such compounds are large, family villas. Behind high walls, westerners can escape Saudi restrictions such as the requirement women outside the home wear enveloping robes.

Residents tend to work as corporate executives, oil industry professionals and teachers.