Saudi says four of five dead militants on wanted list

By Andrew Hammond

RIYADH (Reuters) – Four of five militants killed by Saudi
security forces this week were on a most wanted list of al
Qaeda-linked suspects and two of them took part in an attack on
Saudi oil facilities, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.

The official statement means almost all of the 15 men
thought to be at large in Saudi Arabia on the list of 36 issued
last year have been killed or arrested.

Security analysts say another 21 are outside the country,
many believed to have joined insurgents fighting in Iraq, and
some may be dead.

“They (police) have killed or captured those on the list in
Saudi Arabia in only 8 months,” al Qaeda expert Fares bin
Houzam told Reuters.

“The others who are fighting are the generation who were
recruited through the Internet, unlike those who were trained
in Afghanistan,” the Dubai-based analyst said. “There may still
be more attacks, but how successful they will be is another
issue.”

The five militants were killed in a dawn shootout on Monday
after security forces besieged a villa in an eastern Riyadh
area where several Western residential compounds are located.

The raid took place days after al Qaeda suicide bombers
tried to storm the Abqaiq oil facility in the first direct
strike on a Saudi energy target since the militant group
launched attacks aimed at toppling the U.S.-allied monarchy in
2003. The kingdom is the world’s biggest oil exporter.

Tuesday’s statement named the men as Fahd al-Juweir, Jaffal
al-Shammari, Ibrahim al-Muteir and Abdullah al-Shammari. The
fifth man was yet to be identified. An Interior Ministry
spokesman said the name of a sixth man who was arrested on
Monday would not be released.

It said that Fahd al-Juweir and Jaffal al-Shammari took
part in an al Qaeda attack on the world’s biggest oil
processing plant at Abqaiq in eastern Saudi Arabia last week,
and said Juweir was a leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.

“(Juweir) took charge of the criminal cells after he was in
Afghanistan and then took part in criminal activities (in Saudi
Arabia), moving in disguise between secret locations,” it said.

“He took part in the attack (Abqaiq), and was involved in
shooting the guards at Abqaiq … Shammari also took part in
the attack on the guards,” it said, describing Shammari as an
explosives expert.

The Abqaiq strike was the first major attack by militants
opposed to the Saudi monarchy since suicide bombers tried to
storm the Interior Ministry in Riyadh in December 2004.

The Saudi wing of Osama bin Laden’s network has been
weakened by a government crackdown in which its leaders have
either been killed or arrested.

The statement said tests had shown that some of the
ammunition and explosives seized after Monday’s shootout had
been used in the Abqaiq attack. Television footage shown on
Tuesday showed a tank breaking down the gate into the compound
of a villa and bloodied bodies lying around bombed-out cars.