Saudis kill 3 during raid aimed at averting attack

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi security forces killed three terrorists, including a man wanted by the FBI for terrorist threats against the United States, in an apartment-building shootout Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said.

One security official was also killed in the hourslong gunfight at the three-story residential building in Jizan, about 600 miles south of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Two terrorists also were arrested.

The agency said one of the Saudi men killed was Sultan Jubran Sultan al-Qahtani, also known as Zubayr al-Rimi, 29. The FBI has linked the Saudi native to terror threats against the United States, and he also appears on a Saudi list of terrorists connected to May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh that killed 25 people and nine attackers, according to a Saudi Interior Ministry official.

The early-morning raid was intended to capture terrorists planning an attack, according to an official statement on Saudi state television earlier Tuesday.

Details of the firefight were sketchy, as news often is in this kingdom whose rulers keep a tight lid on the press.

Security officials initially said the gunmen had taken several foreign hostages at King Fahd Hospital. The Interior Ministry statement and later television reports did not mention hostages, but Al-Jazeera television's Web site said all hostages were released.

The building where the militants were apparently holed up is part of a housing complex for the hospital's employees, the ministry said. About 3,000 people live in the complex.

"Security forces made every effort to control the terrorists without inflicting harm on the residents in the building and in the housing complex, despite what the terrorists did when they started firing heavily on security men," the ministry statement said.

Al-Arabiya television quoted a security official as saying at least one of those arrested was on a list of 19 terrorists wanted after police discovered a weapons cache near Riyadh in May. A week later, on May 12, suicide bombings killed 26 people and nine attackers at residential compounds housing Westerners in Riyadh.

The 19 men are believed to be behind the Riyadh bombings and in close contact with the al-Qaida terror network, Saudi officials have said. At least 11 of the 19 have been killed or arrested.

The Saudi government has cracked down on Islamic militants since the May 12 bombings and repeatedly and publicly denounced terrorism and Islamic extremism. More than 200 suspects have been arrested and more than a dozen killed in a series of high-profile police raids since then.

The kingdom has "confronted terrorists, encircled them, disbanded their bases and is still pursuing their criminal remnants and will be victorious, God willing," King Fahd said Tuesday in a speech read on his behalf at a conference in Kazakstan, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

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