SAUDI ARABIA: Two suspected al Qaeda militants blew themselves up on Saturday after being trapped inside a government building in southern Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry says

Record ID: 189840

  • Title: SAUDI ARABIA: Two suspected al Qaeda militants blew themselves up on Saturday after being trapped inside a government building in southern Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry says
  • Date: 6th July 2014
  • Summary: RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA (JULY 5, 2014) (REUTERS) MAJOR GENERAL MANSOUR AL-TURKI, SAUDI MINISTRY OF INTERIOR SPOKESPERSON ENTERING NEWS CONFERENCE REPORTERS, SEATED (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) MAJOR GENERAL MANSOUR AL-TURKI , SAUDI MINISTRY OF INTERIOR SPOKESPERSON, SAYING: "The kingdom as a whole is targeted, not only the crossing points, you are all following the social media and can sense the targeting, we don't rule out the occurrence of terrorist acts at any time." VARIOUS OF REPORTERS LISTENING AND WRITING (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAJOR GENERAL MANSOUR AL-TURKI , SAUDI MINISTRY OF INTERIOR SPOKESPERSON, SAYING: "The other two (al Qaeda militants) who took the policeman's car, they took the car to Sharurah, they were actually able to get in to a security public building. They killed one policeman. Police surrounded them and were able to free the other policemen who were in the building at the time when the two terrorists attacked it. We kept the terrorists surrounded and we asked them to surrender, unfortunately they didn't respond to our calls. This early morning they exploded themselves with the building; now we have started the investigation on the incident." SAUDI AND INTERIOR MINISTRY FLAGS PHOTOGRAPHER.
  • Embargoed: 21st July 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Saudi Arabia
  • Country: Saudi Arabia
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVACEKIAVNXS14PE5AQL7OLOCL1U
  • Story Text: Two suspected al Qaeda militants blew themselves up on Saturday (July 5) after being trapped inside a government building in southern Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said, following an attack on a border post with Yemen that also killed four security men.
    An Interior Ministry spokesman said the two were part of a group of six al Qaeda militants who attacked the Wadia border post on Friday from Yemen. Three of them were killed on Friday and a fourth was captured after being injured.
    Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, has long viewed its 1,800 km (1,100 mile) border with impoverished, conflict-ridden Yemen as a major security problem and has been building a fence to deter militants and criminals.
    The Interior Ministry spokesman, Mansour al-Turki, said security forces surrounded the two men on the second floor of the local intelligence service building in al-Sharurah area after they had forced their way into the building on Friday.
    The militants, who Turki said had been identified as people wanted by the authorities, declined a chance to surrender.

    "We kept the terrorists surrounded and we asked them to surrender, unfortunately they didn't respond to our calls. This early morning they exploded themselves with the building," al-Turki told Reuters.
    Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television earlier reported that the militants had put up "stiff resistance" to security forces surrounding them, firing automatic weapons and hurling grenades at security forces.
    Saudi Arabia has been wary of potential al Qaeda infiltration across its northern border from Iraq, where militants have swept through the Sunni Muslim heartland close to the border with Saudi Arabia.
    To the south, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been waging a campaign of attacks on Yemeni government targets, raising fears the violence could spill across the border to Saudi Arabia.

    "The kingdom as a whole is targeted, not only the crossing points," Turki told journalists, adding that Saudi Arabia would not allow what he called the deviant group - a reference to al Qaeda - to achieve its goals.
    Saudi Arabia, which overcame its own al Qaeda insurgency almost a decade ago, said in May that it had detained 62 suspected al Qaeda militants with links to radicals in Syria and Yemen. It said it believed they were plotting attacks on government and foreign targets in the kingdom.
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