Diplomatic missions shut as terror attacks ‘imminent’

THE United States, Britain, and Germany have closed their diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia after Washington warned that more terror attacks in the oil rich kingdom were “imminent.”

A Saudi official said investigators believed hard-core Muslim militants linked to al-Qaida were ready to volunteer for suicide strikes like the ones that targeted Westerners in the capital Riyadh last week.

He said Saudis were aware of about 50 hard-core Muslim militants, some now dead, believed to belong to three cells, including the one that carried out the Riyadh bombings.

The US decision came as a woman suicide bomber blew herself up yesterday in a cafe in the Turkish capital Ankara, injuring one other person. Turkish police said they believed the woman’s explosives had detonated by accident and linked her to a far-left group.

Washington closed its embassy in the Saudi capital, as well as consulates general in two other cities, following devastating suicide bombings in Riyadh and in Morocco’s biggest city Casablanca last week. The attacks have been linked to Osama bin Laden’s terror network al-Qaida.

After the triple suicide bombings in the Saudi capital eight days ago that killed at least 34 people, including eight Americans, Riyadh’s envoy to Washington said he believed a much bigger operation was planned.

“I think they were looking to do something more major than this,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan said.

“My gut feeling tells me that something big is going to happen here or in America,” he said, adding that he believed there were around 50 hardcore militants in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam.

Washington’s closure of its Riyadh embassy, as well as consulates general in Jeddah and the eastern city of Dhahran, until May 25 came one day after authorities detained a gunman roaming around the US consulate in Dhahran. No one was hurt or directly threatened.

In Morocco, where 41 people died in Friday night’s multiple suicide bombings, authorities initially blamed al-Qaida, but then on Monday ruled it out.

Yesterday, however, Interior Minister Mustapha Sahel repeated that a link with international terrorism had been established.

“The arrest of the two terrorists still alive has led to considerable progress in terms of information,” he said in a statement.

“This allows us today to confirm the link with international terrorism.”

Mr Sahel said 12 Casablanca attackers died by blowing themselves up, not 13 as initially reported, when they struck mainly Jewish and Spanish targets and a Kuwaiti-owned hotel.

After talks in London with Moroccan Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: “There have been other times in recent post-war history when there have been very serious terrorist outrages across the world. We fight them, and this battle against terrorism is one which we are winning and we will win.”

After the blast in Turkey, police said they believed the dead woman worked for a far-left group, DHKP-C (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front).

DHKP-C, the largest of Turkey’s extreme-left factions, said it was behind a string of small blasts in Istanbul last month to protest against the US-led war in Iraq.

The explosion rocked the three-storey café in Ankara's main commercial district.