The Hindu : International : Saudi militants `fired at school van'

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Tuesday, Jun 01, 2004

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International

Saudi militants `fired at school van'

By Owen Bowcott

RIYADH, MAY 31. The first attacks were timed to ambush foreign oil and construction experts as they returned to work after the Muslim weekend. It was 7.15am on Saturday. The traffic was building up on the palm tree-lined highways in Khobar.

Wearing uniforms and using cars with military markings, several car-loads of armed militant Islamists drove up to two commercial complexes. Their disguises were designed not to arouse the suspicion of the Saudi security guards.

Within minutes, bursts of gunfire rang out across the streets of the Saudi Gulf port, triggering a security alert as news of the attacks spread among the city's panicking commuters.

``I was on my way into the office'', said Angel, a Filipino administrative worker who would give only his first name, ``but there were vehicles stopped in the street, so I couldn't turn in to the building. I thought it was a traffic jam or an accident.

``There were people gathered around a petrol station, watching. I pulled in where I could see the building. Then I heard firing. The gunmen were still inside. I got out of my car and ran away. I ran as fast as I could and I hid behind the bucket of a bulldozer. There was more shooting going on. After about 20 minutes, some heavily armoured cars and the police arrived.''

He added: ``Then the shooting came out on to the street. Everyone who was sheltering scattered.''

The two sites targeted were the five-storey Al Rushaid Petroleum Centre and the vast, modernist headquarters of the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation (Apicorp).

The Petroleum Centre — which has two, linked buildings — houses scores of western firms involved in the oil industry. Witnesses at the scene yesterday said the offices of Resource Sciences Arabia Ltd (RSAL) was one of those where staff were killed.

The second ambush came at the front gate of Apicorp. The undulating roof and courtyards of the complex were designed to create cool comfort in the searing, summer heat of the Gulf city. But there was little protection for Michael Hamilton, the 62-year-old British oil executive who arrived for work shortly after 7.15am.

The attackers then opened fire on a bus carrying schoolchildren and killed a 10-year-old Egyptian boy, the son of another Apicorp employee. Mr. Hamilton had just dropped his wife off on the way to work, a spokesman for Apicorp, Marhdi Al-Marhdi, told BBC television yesterday.

``The gunmen were targeting those arriving at the gate. They shot Mr. Hamilton in his car. They killed two of the security guards and then they shot at the school van carrying children and killed one of them.''

Then, in an act calculated to terrify and humiliate the expatriate community which staffs much of Saudi Arabia's oil industry, the gunmen tied the body of one of their foreign victims — thought to be that of Mr. Hamilton — to a car and dragged it through the streets. It was eventually dumped beside a bridge. It was an identical ritual to that inflicted on an American victim of an attack on a petrochemical site in the Red Sea town of Yanbu earlier this month.

The militants fled and regrouped at the luxury Oasis Residential Resorts compound, a maze of private villas, hotels and leisure centres inhabited mainly by privileged foreign workers and secured behind high walls.

The compound even contains an ice-skating rink and grassy poolside beach. Employees of Royal Dutch/Shell, Total and the Russian company Lukoil are among its residents.

In a series of raids on villas and private homes, the gunmen began rounding up foreign hostages. According to Arab survivors, the Islamists tried to separate out the non-Muslims. (After past attacks on housing compounds, Al-Qaeda was heavily criticised in the Arab press for having killed Muslims from other West Asian states.)

Five Lebanese hostages were reported to have been questioned, but eventually released. One of them, Orora Naoufal, told reporters she had cowered in her apartment with her four-year-old son for five hours after an encounter with two of the gunmen, whom she described as clean-shaven and wearing military uniforms.

The men had asked her where the `infidels' and foreigners were, and whether she was Muslim or Christian. ``I replied: "I am Lebanese and there are no foreigners here.''' The gunmen, she said, instructed her to ``go convert to Islam and cover up and go back to your country.''

Another Lebanese survivor, Abdulsalam Hakawti, a 38-year-old financial director, was at home with his wife and two-year-old son. He heard someone break through the door of his villa and ran upstairs, pursued by a gunman.

``Asalam Alaykum,'' he declared, using the traditional Muslim greeting. Mr. Hakawti said: ``(The gunman) told me, "Our jihad is not against Muslims, but against Americans and Westerners', and asked me to show him which villas had Americans and westerners.''

Saudi newspapers reported yesterday that the attackers had thrown at least one body from the top floor of the hotel and had mutilated some of the bodies of those they had killed. —

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