Westerners under guard after Saudi attack

Saudi Arabia received assurances of help in the war on terror today after a suicide car bombing killed at least 17 people and injured dozens in the capital Riyadh.

Armed police and military guards and armoured vehicles blocked the roads leading to the compound housing mostly Arab foreigners that was the scene of Saturday’s attack.

Security also was heavier at compounds for Western foreigners today.

A US embassy spokesperson said that after a daily review of the threat level, staff and their families were told they could now travel outside Riyadh’s heavily guarded diplomatic quarter where they had been ordered to stay on Saturday.

But the spokesperson said the embassy would remain closed indefinitely. The embassy closed before the bombing, citing warnings a terror attack was imminent.

The car bombing was portrayed by Saudis as proof of the al-Qaida terror network’s willingness to shed Arab and Muslim blood as well in its zeal to bring down the Saudi monarchy.

At least 13 of those killed were Arabs, with four as yet unidentified, an Interior Ministry official said. Five were children. In addition, 122 people were injured, most of them Arabs as well.

The blast left piles of rubble, hunks of twisted metal, broken glass and a large crater in the compound located not far from the diplomatic quarter and the king’s main palace.

The secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, Abdel Wahid Balqziz, today denounced the Riyadh bombing as a “horrendous terrorist act.”

The United States joined countries pledging to stand by Saudi Arabia.

“On behalf of my nation I will just pledge that we will be fully participating partners if that is the desire of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who arrived in the Saudi capital last night on a previously scheduled.

Armitage said he was ”personally quite sure” al-Qaida was behind the car bombing “because this attack bears the hallmark of them.”

Such attacks appear to be directed “against the government of Saudi Arabia and the people of Saudi Arabia,” he said, adding that he expected more to follow.

Al-Qaida, led by Saudi-born, fugitive multimillionaire Osama bin Laden, has long opposed the Saudi royal family, accusing it of being insufficiently Islamic and too close to the West, particularly the United States.

The Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Turki al-Faisal, cited similarities between the bombing and previous al-Qaida strikes.

“I must assume that it is al-Qaida,” Prince Turki told BBC radio today.