'Six dead' after gunmen attack Saudi oil offices

Saudi security forces stormed a prestige expatriate housing complex where gunmen holed up and took hostages after a shooting dead at least six people at oil company offices in the eastern city of Khobar.

A 10-year-old boy, and at least three Westerners, including an American, were among the dead in the second deadly attack on oil industry targets in the kingdom this month.

There were reports the death toll could be as high as 15.

Saudi security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said security forces were storming the residential compound and firing shots.

A police officer inside the compound had told Associated Press a short time earlier that the hostages had been released and negotiations were going on.

Guards for other area compounds spoke of four gunmen in military-style dress attacking two oil company offices, then engaging Saudi security forces in a shootout and hunkering down inside a residential compound along the same street in Khobar, where they took hostages.

A Western diplomat confirmed attacks on at least three compounds in Khobar, 250 miles northeast of Riyadh.

Mahmoud Ouf, an Egyptian consular officer in Riyadh, said Rami Samir Al-Goneimi, an Egyptian 10-year-old, was killed in the compound of Apicorp, the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation, where his father worked.

Officials from Apicorp, the investment arm of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Companies, would not immediately comment, but said they were preparing a statement.

Witnesses said they saw three men with Western features lying on the ground covered with newspapers. Those bodies were taken away in ambulances, they said.

One American was confirmed dead, a U.S. Embassy official said.

The pan-Arab satellite television network Al-Arabiya showed the body of a man, apparently shot dead, in the driver’s seat of a car and the burned-out frame of a sport utility vehicle. Bullet holes were visible in other vehicles shown, some with windows smashed and blood staining the seats.

Nationalities of some foreigners killed were not known, but the British Foreign Office in London said British officials were en route to Khobar from Riyadh to check into reports a British national was dead.

Philippines officials in Manila said they were checking unconfirmed reports that three Filipinos were among the dead. Jose Brillantes, a senior official in the Philippines foreign ministry, said four Filipinos were believed to be among the injured, but their conditions were unknown.

Two security guards were believed to be dead, according to the Western diplomat, who said there were at least three separate shooting attacks. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity.

The gunmen – whose number was not clear, though some people in Khobar said they saw four – took refuge in a compound housing Arabs and Westerners after a shootout with security forces, witnesses said.

At least 10 ambulances were seen outside the Oasis compound, a luxury residential complex owned by a Saudi businessman. Hundreds of policemen surrounded the compound, and helicopters hovered overhead, witnesses said.

Lebanon’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Chammat, told Associated Press that five Lebanese hostages had been released Saturday from the Oasis compound - a father, mother and their son as well as another Lebanese woman and her son.

“The Saudi security forces have managed to free all the Lebanese,” Chammat said. He said he did not know if other nationals had been taken hostage or still were being held.

“The gunmen barged into the homes of the Lebanese at Oasis compound and took them hostage. The gunmen began by attacking Apicorp then they moved to the petroleum company. They were being pursued by Saudi police, so they went into the (Oasis) compound and took hostages,” Chammat said.

Saudi Arabia has launched a high-profile crackdown on terrorists following attacks on Riyadh housing compounds in 2003. The government says it has foiled dozens of terror attacks in the kingdom. Most of the attacks were blamed on al Qaida.

The most recent terror attack in Saudi Arabia targeted the offices of Houston-based ABB Lummus Global Inc. in the western city of Yanbu on May 1, killing six Westerners and a Saudi.