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Saudi says four of five dead militants on wanted list

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 February 2006, 09:56 CST

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.

Source: REUTERS

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