US says Americans among 91 dead in Saudi attacks

Suicide bombers in the Saudi capital killed some 91 people, the US vice president said yesterday, making the attack on expatriate housing compounds one of the biggest suspected al Qaeda strikes on Western targets.

There remained considerable doubt about the toll, however. The attackers drove, guns blazing, into three guarded housing compounds for expatriates shortly before midnight and set off huge car bombs.

"This was a well-planned terrorist attack," Powell said in Riyadh. "It has all the fingerprints of an al Qaeda operation."

US Vice President Dick Cheney said "some 91 people were killed". But Saudi officials had said earlier that 29 had died, including nine bombers. Medical sources in the secretive kingdom later questioned Cheney's figure, sticking to a toll around 29.

Other US officials could not confirm Cheney's figure. Powell had earlier said up to 10 Americans were among the dead.

On a Middle East tour to explain US policy after the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein, Powell visited a walled complex for US defence workers and saw for himself the devastation wrought as residents slept. Entire walls of apartment blocks collapsed.

"These despicable acts were committed by killers whose only faith is hate, and the United States will find the killers and they will learn the meaning of American justice," said President George W. Bush in Indianapolis. "The war on terror continues."

US officials in the kingdom had been on the alert. Just days ago, a purported al Qaeda spokesman told a Saudi-owned magazine of a new September 11-style attack: "The strike on America is definitely coming," Thabet bin Qais told al-Majalla.

Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, blamed by Washington for the coordinated hijack attacks on September 11, 2001, has struck US bases and other targets in Saudi Arabia before in its bid to drive US troops from a land sacred to Islam.

Though Washington announced a troop withdrawal from the kingdom two weeks ago after ousting President Saddam, Bush's critics have warned that the Iraq war may fan hatred of America across the Muslim world. Riyadh was the first major attack on Americans since the war.

Ending a troop deployment dating from the 1991 Gulf War, Bush hopes to help the Saudi monarchy, a key oil-exporting ally, appease Islamic challenges to its rule. But warnings of renewed attacks suggest al Qaeda has regrouped since bin Laden vanished during the US attack on his Afghan Taliban protectors in 2001.

"This could be the beginning of a major campaign aimed at the Americans," exiled Saudi opposition activist Saad al-Fagih, head of the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, told Reuters. "This is the beginning of martyrdom operations."

London's Foreign Office echoed the warning, advising Britons to steer clear of the kingdom. "Terrorist attacks could involve the use of chemical and biological materials," it said.

The Saudi ambassador to London blamed members of a group of 19 al Qaeda suspects who went missing in Riyadh this month.

Australia said one of its citizens had also been killed. A medical source in the secretive kingdom told Reuters many of the wounded were still in intensive care. Other officials said at least 160 people were wounded, including 40 Americans.

The US ambassador advised Americans to leave Saudi Arabia if they could and an American school in Riyadh cancelled classes for the week, its first such closure since the Gulf War.

The blasts shortly before midnight sent fireballs into the night sky above the compounds in the Gharnata, Ishbiliya and Cordoba districts. A clock inside one building stopped at 11:28.

"We were sleeping when we were woken up by the sound of gunfire," one European, Nick, told the Arab News newspaper.

"Moments later, a loud explosion was heard followed by another bigger explosion."

Cars and pickup trucks, badly twisted and still smouldering, littered the complexes of villas and four-storey blocks. Many balconies were blown off, leaving steel girders jutting out. The bombs gouged massive holes in walls and brought down roofs.

About 30,000 American expatriates work in Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, many in the oil industry, but also in services such as finance, defence and health. There are also about 30,000 British residents among a large Western community.

Oil prices nudged upwards in reaction to the attacks. Saudi Arabia has charged 90 Saudis with belonging to al Qaeda and is interrogating a further 250. Most of the 19 suspected September 11 al Qaeda hijackers were Saudi citizens.