Three still on run after hostage massacre

Saudi authorities searched an hotel in a residential compound today for clues left behind by suspected al-Qaida militants – three of whom were on the run - after a shooting rampage and hostage standoff that killed 22 people, most of them foreigners.

Blood stains, glass shards, bullet holes and evidence of grenade blasts scarred the Oasis compound in Khobar, according to an employee who had been inside the heavily guarded compound assessing damage.

Outside, red-and-white concrete barriers, soldiers and gun-mounted vehicles kept people away.

Broken windows were visible in the upper floors of the hotel where a daylong hostage standoff ended with one attacker arrested and three escaping.

Nine hostages were killed.

Surviving hostages – dozens were freed – have kept away from the media, and Saudi authorities have not provided many details on how the standoff ended.

Saudi security stormed the building early yesterday after they found out that the hostages were being harmed, said Jamal Khashoggi, an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s embassy in London.

“Intervention then became necessary,” Khashoggi said.

An official Interior Ministry statement said the three who escaped used hostages as human shields until they were able to commandeer a vehicle and flee, leaving the hostages behind.

A police official said today that the escaping attackers fled to nearby Dammam, where they abandoned the truck for a car commandeered at gunpoint from an unidentified driver and drove off with police in pursuit. The three remained at large today.

The Oasis employee relayed an account from a freed hostage he spoke to who said security forces allowed the attackers to flee because they were killing hostages.

The former hostage said he heard a gunman say: “Let us go and we’ll let the hostages go". Security forces first refused, but agreed after the militants, who also threatened to blow up the building, began killing hostages, the former hostage said.

A Saudi security official would not directly address whether the militants were allowed to escape.

But he said: “Our main priority was the hostages, and those guys who ran away. We know how to find them.”

Nizar Hijazeen, a 32-year-old Jordanian software engineer who cowered in one of the hotel’s rooms throughout the ordeal, said he saw five bodies scattered around the hotel after it was over.

“All the bodies appeared to have been shot,” Hijazeen said.

A statement attributed to al-Qaida’s chief in the Saudi region, Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, said the violence aimed to punish the kingdom for its oil dealings with the United States and to drive “crusaders” from “the land of Islam”.

The attack in the kingdom’s oil industry hub was expected to have some affect on world oil markets – where prices have been at new highs – but analysts have said that jitters should not be too strong since no hard oil facilities, such as refineries, were targeted.