'We Only Want Westerners'
By Patrick Cockburn
31 May 2004
The IndependentIt was the latest in a series of ruthless attacks on foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, targeting the employees of foreign oil companies. In each case the gunmen have aimed to slaughter as many non-Muslims as possible.
At 7.30 on Saturday morning, they chose the city of Khobar, an important hub of the Saudi oil industry. As many as seven gunmen wearing military-style uniforms opened fire at the Al-Khobar Petroleum Centre building, which houses offices of western oil companies in the Gulf city. They also sprayed with gunfire an oil industry compound housingoffices and apartments of the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation (Apicorp). Three of its employees and the son of another - a 10-year-old Egyptian boy on a school bus - were killed.
Michael Hamilton, a British manager at Apicorp, was shot dead in his black saloon. His mobile phone was left on the front seat as his bloodied body was tied to a car by the gunmen and dragged through the streets before it was dumped near a bridge. It had chilling echoes of an incident at the beginning of the month when the body of an American was dragged through Yanbu, a Saudi city on the Red Sea, in an attack by five militants on a petrochemical facility. The events surrounding the initial attack in Khobar are confused. But if, as suspected, al-Qa'ida is involved then it has returned to the area where - a few miles away in Dhahran - in 1996 it set off bombs to destroy a US military compound, killing 19 American soldiers.
After the shootings at the two compounds the gunmen fled to the Oasis Residential Resorts. There, they seized between 45 and 60 hostages in a walled-off district which houses executives and is too expensive for ordinary oil workers to live in.
It contains restaurants, an ice rink, spas, swimming pools a pastry shop and gardens. It also has 200 villas, 48 apartments, 195 studio apartments as well as a hotel and luxury apartments. Security companies recommend foreigners to live in such places, which are considered more secure and where vehicles entering can be checked. But the existence of these compounds also provides convenient targets for groups that want to kill foreigners.
Once the gunmen had taken over Oasis, they started to hunt down non-Muslims to kill or take hostage. Abu Hashem, 45, an Iraqi-American engineer, was leaving for work when he heard the sound of gunfire. He went back home and took his wife and two children to a neighbour's house for safety. Abu Hashem noticed that there were blood stains on the floor of his house and went looking for security guards. Instead he found four Saudi men with short beards and whose ages he said were between 18 and 25. A revealing conversation followed. Abu Hashem asked the men: "Are you guards?" They said they were and asked him if he was a Muslim. When he said he was they said: "Give us proof." Abu Hashem knew they could not be regular security guards and took out his identity papers which showed he was a Muslim but also revealed that he was an American of Iraqi origins.
When the gunmen said he was an American, Abu Hashem said this was true but he was an American Muslim. To his relief they said, "we do not kill Muslims" and politely apologised for breaking into his home. They then lectured him on Islam and told him: "We are defending our country and we want to take it from the non-believers" - probably a reference to the royal family of Saudi Arabia.
Another Muslim resident, Salam al-Hakawati, 38, a Lebanese corporate finance official, hid with his wife and two-year-old son upstairs when they heard gunfire. He heard people searching rooms downstairs and saying "this is a Muslim house" when they saw Koranic verses. A man with a machine gun came upstairs and said to him in Arabic: "We only want to hurt Westerners and Americans. Can you tell us where we can find them here?"
By now gunmen had killed at least 16, including Mr Hamilton, an American and an Italian cook. The Saudi security forces stormed the Oasis compound, a walled complex, and surrounded the attackers on the sixth floor of a high-rise building. During the night they tried to rescue hostages but retreated when they found booby traps. At night the gunmen also started to kill hostages, who are by now said to have numbered 25.
One of those who survived, a Jordanian computer engineer, Nijar Hijazin, said: "The nine had their throats cut by the kidnappers when they tried to escape at night by the stairs."
At no time did the hostage-takers ask to negotiate according to Jamal Khashoggi, a media adviser to the Saudi Arabian ambassador to London. He said: "They didn't have any demands, they just started killing people." He said that the nine hostages who were killed were in addition to the 16. The Saudi authorities say it was the killing of hostages which led to the decision to storm the building.
Saudi newspapers said that one body had been thrown from the top of the building and others had been mutilated.
Just after sunrise some 40 black-clad Saudi commandos dropped into the compound from three helicopters. There was gunfire and some 50 hostages were freed. Saudi security officials said the gunmen's leader had been arrested, two killed - several escaped.
There was confusion yesterday about the identity and the number of those killed. Nine Saudis and eight foreigners are reported to have died in the first clashes before the attackers moved to Oasis. A manager in the compound said three foreigners, including a Briton and an American, were killed in the rescue. A security source confirmed hostages had died. Others were being treated for exhaustion and dehydration.
At about the same time as the high-rise was being stormed, a man who claimed to be Abdul Aziz al-Moqrin, identified as the chief of al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia, claimed responsibility for the attack in a tape posted on the internet on a a website noted for militant Islamic comment. He identifies by nationality the foreigners who were killed, although he says it was an American whose body was dragged through the streets. Moqrin denounces the Saudi government for selling out to the US and providing "America with oil at the cheapest prices ... so that their economy does not collapse".
The recording may have been made inside the besieged building because it ends with volleys of shots and men shouting: "Open the door quickly."
PREVIOUS ATTACKS
25 June 1996: 19 US servicemen killed and 372 wounded by a car bomb at Khobar Towers, a military housing complex, in Dhahran. Members of Saudi Hizbollah, and the government of Iran, blamed.
22 April 2003: Car bomb at Saudi security HQ in Riyadh; four killed, 150 hurt. The al-Haramain Brigades, a group linked to al-Qa'ida, claimed responsibility.
14 May 2003: More than 30, including eight US citizens, killed, 200 hurt in suicide bombings at three compounds in Riyadh. The US said the attacks showed "fingerprints" of al-Qa'ida.
1 May 2004: Two Americans, two Britons, an Australian and a Saudi guard who worked for a US contractor shot dead in Yanbu. Al-Qa'ida claimed responsibility.