Irish woman believed to have died in Saudi suicide attacks

An Irish woman is believed to have been killed in the Saudi suicide bomb attacks that investigators have blamed on Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror group.

The death toll from the synchronised attacks on foreign compounds in the capital Riyadh rose to at least 34 today – including nine bombers, said the Saudi Interior Ministry.

It said the five additional dead were an Irish woman, am Australian of Lebanese origin, a Briton, a Filipinoh woman and an unidentified person.

About 2,000 Saudi civil defence workers searched for evidence of the attackers’ identities and methods today.

Investigators wearing surgical gloves sifted through the rubble at the al-Hamra compound in north-eastern Riyadh.

There a car-bomb had left a crater 20 feet wide and three feet deep.

President George Bush spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah pledging US support for the kingdom’s “fight against terrorism.”

The United States ordered most of its nonessential diplomats and family members to leave Saudi Arabia and sent FBI agents to Riyadh.

The American Embassy in Riyadh was closed for security reasons today.

A US diplomat said that while Saudi civil defence workers had finished looking for survivors and bodies, the embassy was still “trying to figure out how many Americans have died.”

The State Department in Washington has put the American death toll at eight.

The Saudis say nearly 200 people were wounded, most not seriously, and 40 of these are believed to be Americans.

The Saudi government says the attacks are connected to the 19 al-Qaida operatives who engaged in a gunfight with police in Riyadh on May 6.

“The only information we have is that some of them were members of the group that was sought a few days ago, the 19 fellows whose pictures came out in the press,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Britain and a former Saudi intelligence chief.

The 19 escaped, but one surrendered later. They comprised 17 Saudis, a Yemeni, and an Iraqi with Kuwaiti and Canadian citizenship.

Interior Minister Prince Nayef said the 19 are believed to take orders directly from Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida’s leader and the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

Prince Nayef said he did not rule out the possibility of more attacks.