Bomb blast in Saudi Arabia

At least one person was killed and 60 injured in a series of bomb blasts in Saudi capital Riyadh, including a car packed with explosives that rammed into a residential compound housing westerners, hospital and security officials said today.

At least one person was killed and 60 injured in a series of bomb blasts in the Saudi capital Riyadh, including a car packed with explosives that rammed into a residential compound housing westerners, hospital and security officials said today.

“We don’t know how many are injured, but we received 50 and the number is growing,” an official at Riyadh’s National Guard Hospital said.

“We’re very busy, we are receiving a lot of casualties.”

An official at the Abdul-Rahman Al-Mishari hospital said a man in his early 20s was killed in an explosion at the compound.

His body, along with five people suffering minor injuries, was brought to the hospital.

No further details were provided.

A woman was in critical condition and four others were slightly injured at another hospital, officials said.

The blasts came hours before US Secretary of State Colin Powell was expected to arrive in Riyadh from Amman, Jordan.

He was scheduled to meet Saudi leaders seeking their help in harnessing militant groups and in promoting Palestinian reform.

Mr Powell has already been in Israel, the West Bank and Egypt.

US officials initially suspected the al-Qaida terrorist network for the attacks.

In Washington, State Department press officer Nancy Beck could not confirm reports of American casualties and said as of last night, there were no changes in Mr Powell’s schedule.

“We are advising American citizens to remain at home until we ascertain the nature of any ongoing threat,” she said.

A counterintelligence official in Washington said intelligence from the past two weeks indicated al- Qaida was close to launching a strike in Saudi Arabia.

The State Department advised Americans earlier his month against travel to Saudi Arabia because of increased terrorism concerns.

Saudi officials also have recently said al-Qaida was planning attacks in the oil-rich kingdom, which is the birthplace of Osama bin Laden and home to Islam’s holiest sites.

It was the home to 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers. In 1996, a truck bombing killed 19 Americans at the Khobar Towers barracks in Dhahran, in eastern Saudi Arabia.

In last night’s attacks, gunmen in three cars shot their way into the three residential compounds before setting off explosives in the vehicles, a Saudi official said.

The official said it was not known if the gunmen killed themselves in the blasts or fled.

Another Saudi security official told the AP that a black Chevrolet Caprice sedan crashed into a residential compound in Garnata, an eastern suburb of Riyadh.

The compound is owned by and named after Riyadh’s deputy governor Abdullah Al-Blaidh and includes several residential complexes housing mainly westerners and non-Saudis.

The names of the other two Western compounds attacked were not immediately known.

An American who lives in one of the targeted areas told the AP in an e-mail exchange from Riyadh that three Western compounds were attacked.

There was extensive damage to property and that he believed there had been some deaths.

Witnesses said the force of the blast shook nearby buildings and rattled windows.

Scores of police cars and ambulances sped to the site of the Al-Blaidh compound explosion, over which a helicopter circled and smoke from the blast lingered.

Hundreds of anti-riot police and members of the elite National Guard converged on the scene, evacuating residents, sealing off the area and holding reporters back from the scene.

Shortly after the first three explosions, a fourth blast early today targeted a joint US-Saudi-owned company’s headquarters in eastern Riyadh, security officials said.

The officials said that the explosion was aimed at the headquarters of the Saudi Maintenance Company, also known as Siyanco.

Justice Department and FBI officials said they were monitoring the situation in Saudi Arabia but had no immediate indication that other attacks might be planned against US interests at home or abroad.

Last week, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that most of the 5,000 US troops in Saudi Arabia would leave by summer’s end.

The presence of US troops has been a major irritant to the kingdom’s rulers, who face strong anti-American sentiment from the population.

Last week, a senior Saudi security official said suspected terrorists were receiving orders directly from bin Laden and had been planning attacks in Saudi Arabia targeting the royal family as well as US and British interests.

On May 6, Saudi security forces seized a large cache of weapons and explosives in Riyadh when searching for a number of suspected terrorists.