[ Monday, May 12, 2003 ]
BIGGER THAN BALI?
The US Says 90 dead and the Saudis say 30 dead are they downplaying this most synchronized of bombings since 911? Spectacular? This WAS spectacular.
The Spectacular Attack in Saudi Arabia was a direct result from Bush and Blairs excellent Iraqi Adventure in general and our BULLY foreign policy in particular.
How much more spectacular can one ask for?Seven or Nine suicide bombers in one operation?Thats spectacular.Israel in all the years of Suicide bombers didnt see that.
The sad part is that instead of reexamining our selves and saying we made a mistake and yes our foreign policy was tilted towards the interests of Israel and here agents in Washington and not the Arabs, all that will change now.
If we change our foreign policy to be fair and unbiased all the terror will stop.
Its so simple yet George Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld cry out if in almost unison " The war on terra continues and we will TEACH them the meaning of American JUSTICE!"
Heres the IHT article:
"The U.S. State Department said that about 90 people died in the attack, and Vice President Dick Cheney used that figure in a speech. But officials later said the Saudi figures appeared to be correct.
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Secretary of State Colin Powell, who arrived here hours after the attack on a scheduled visit, toured an apartment complex with its entire front blown off, with furniture and clothing strewn about and a 4-meter-deep (10-foot-deep) crater and an overturned truck blasted apart nearby.
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Like other officials, Powell said there was no evidence that Al Qaeda had carried out the attack, but he said it had that group’s ‘‘fingerprints.’’
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Powell, who arrived early Tuesday for a scheduled meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah, seemed shaken as he toured an eerie scene of carnage as a dust storm whipped through the rubble and a pungent stench from the explosives hung in the air.
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‘‘This was a well-planned terrorist attack, obviously,’’ he said somberly, with the wreckage behind him. ‘‘The fa cility had been cased, as had the others. Very well executed. And it shows the nature of the enemy we are working against. These are people who are determined to try to penetrate facilities like this for the purpose of killing people in their sleep, killing innocent people, killing people who are trying to help others.’’
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A military officer at the Vinnell Arabia Compound, which was visited by Powell, said there was a possibility that some of the perpetrators had fled at either the compound entrance or from the second vehicle before it exploded.
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He said that all of the attacks took place within a few minutes at approximately 11:20 p.m. and it appeared the truck at the Vinnell complex contained 880 kilograms (400 pounds) of explosive material similar, he said, to RDX or Semtex.
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That attackers appeared clearly to have singled out residential compounds occupied by foreigners. The Vinnell compound was one of about 500 military advisers, many retired from American armed forces, employed to help train the Saudi National Guard, which is a domestic security force.
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The other two compounds were identified as Al Hambra and Gedawal, both occupied by foreigners working in Saudi Arabia for businesses and trade organizations. These sites were lived in not only by Americans but also by British, Philippine, Turkish and other foreign citizens, as well as Saudis.
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The estimates of the number of expatriates living in Riyadh ranges from 15,000 to about 35,000, but some whose apartment was blown up at Al Hambra said Tuesday evening that many of their colleagues had left the country before the war with Iraq, only to return with a renewed feeling of complacency.
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‘‘Before the war, they asked us all to leave,’’ said Jelal Berkel, 39, an employee of Saudi Snack Foods, a subsidiary of Frito Lay. ‘‘But we said we feel secure in the compound. What a mistake.’’ He said he and his wife, Elif, heard a loud clicking sound late at night, at first thinking it was firecrackers. It turned out to be automatic gunfire.
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When they went to the window, they said they saw a huge orange light covering the sky, followed by an explosion and then intense heat. The blast blew open their windows and doors. But in a videotape they made of the damage, the fronts of several apartments and villas had been sheered off and the contents blown about the area.
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‘‘It looks like a cruise missile or a Tomahawk or Scud missile fell into the place,’’ Berkel said.
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The Berkels said they were leaving Saudi Arabia immediately, and they predicted other foreigners would as well, and they seemed puzzled by their own complacency until recently. Berkel said that after the war with Iraq was over, the security gate to their compound was kept open after being closed.
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‘‘You believe what you want to believe,’’ she said. ‘‘We thought it was very secure. We were just so happy and relaxed that everything was back to normal.’’
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The New York Times Condemnations from abroad
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Arab states Tuesday poured condemnation on three suicide bombings on expatriate housing compounds in the Saudi capital overnight that killed at least 29 people, Agence France-Presse reported from Dubai.
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President Jacques Chirac of France, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, as well as King Abdullah II of Jordan all telephoned the Saudi Crown Prince, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, to express their condolences and voice solidarity with the Gulf state, the Saudi official news agency SPA said.
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Kuwait and Bahrain, both neighbors of Saudi Arabia, branded the attacks, for which they blamed the Qaeda terror network of Osama bin Laden, as ‘‘criminal acts.’’
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The Kuwaiti foreign minister, Sheikh Sabah Ahmed Sabah, sent a message to his Saudi counterpart, Prince Saud al Faisal, spelling out ‘‘Kuwait’s condemnation of these criminal acts.’’
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The emirate would support ‘‘all measures that Riyadh may take to safeguard its security,’’ said the message.
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In Manama, Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Khalifa also backed any ‘‘steps Riyadh may take to eliminate these terrorist acts aimed at destabilizing’’ the kingdom.
art [4:28 PM]
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