Attack in Saudi Arabia kills five from the West

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Suspected militants sprayed gunfire inside an oil contractor’s office Saturday, killing at least five Westerners — including two Americans — and wounding at least 25 others. Police killed four gunmen in a shootout after a car chase in which the attackers reportedly dragged the naked body of one victim behind their getaway car.

One of the attackers killed was reported to be on the Saudi kingdom’s list of most-wanted terrorists, many of them suspects in last year’s suicide attacks on foreign housing compounds in the capital, Riyadh. The two attacks were blamed on al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden’s terror network.

Three of the gunmen worked at the office of ABB-Lummus in the industrial city of Yanbu, 220 miles north of the Red Sea city of Jiddah; they used their key cards to enter the building and sneak another attacker through an emergency gate, according to an Interior Ministry source.

Witnesses said police engaged in a shootout with the gunmen outside a Holiday Inn before overpowering them on a downtown street. A statement from the Interior Ministry said police killed three attackers and wounded and captured a fourth, who died later.

"Using different arms, they started firing at the offices of the company’s personnel before leaving the scene in a hurry to begin attacking a residential compound," the agency quoted the source as saying.

The Interior Ministry statement said the gunmen walked into the offices and "randomly shot at Saudi and foreign employees." The offices are across the street from a petrochemicals plant co-owned by Exxon Mobil and the Saudi company SABIC.

After opening fire in the office, the attackers tied the body of one victim to the back of a stolen car before fleeing, according to a witness.

The Web site of the English-language Saudi Gazette reported that the attackers stripped the man naked before tying him to the getaway car and dragging him along a road.

There was no word on the motivation behind Saturday’s shootings. But Crown Prince Abdullah, speaking on Saudi television, said, "The kingdom will eliminate terrorism no matter how long it takes."

Later, the Saudi Press Agency quoted Abdullah as telling a gathering of princes in Jiddah that "Zionism is behind terrorist actions in the kingdom. I can say that I am 95 percent sure of that."

The two Americans killed were engineers for ABB-Lummus, the Houston-based energy arm of multinational engineering company ABB.

Copyright ©2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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