Shift in terror tactics leaves trail of dead Westerners in Saudi Arabia

DUBAI – Al-Qaeda militants are adopting new terror tactics in Saudi Arabia hunting down and killing individual westerners in line with published battleplans designed to drive out “infidels”.

The murder in broad daylight on Tuesday of 44-year-old American Robert Jacob was the latest in a series of ruthless death squad killings which security forces appear powerless to stop. A witness told AFP that the man was pursued from a nearby clinic by two or three gunmen, who pumped him full of bullets inside his home before fleeing the scene.He suffered nine bullet wounds to the head.Police were left to remove the body.Alerted around 2:30 pm (1130 GMT) to “shooting in a house in the east of Riyadh”, security forces went to the scene where “they saw that the house was inhabited by an American national, who was killed in the incident”, Riyadh’s police chief told the official SPA news agency.Suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen shot dead an Irish cameraman and gravely wounded a BBC correspondent on Sunday evening.Newspapers reported that one attacker also ran after the wounded correspondent firing off more bullets and leaving him for dead.The pair were filming in a slum district notorious as a hotbed of extremism, close to the home of a former wanted militant who was himself shot dead by security forces in the same area last December.On June 1, an American serviceman escaped with minor injuries when his vehicle came under fire on a highway outside Riyadh.A German national was shot dead outside a bank in Riyadh on May 22.The shootings directly follow threats bearing all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda and declaring a mission to “cleanse” the Arabian Peninsula of “infidels”.A statement in the name of the Al-Qaeda chief in Saudi Arabia surfaced on May 27 urging his followers to wage an urban guerrilla war of assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.The “execution group” or “strike force” in each four-tiered cell should be “trained to carry out operations inside cities, including assassinations, abductions, bombings, sabotage, raids and the liberation of hostages,” said the communique attributed to Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin and posted on www.qal3ah.org.It went on in great detail to outline how each guerilla cell should be composed of four groups: a field command, an intelligence-gathering group, a third assigned to prepare the equipment and groundwork for operations, and a fourth that would execute the attacks and would be made up of two to four members.”In a country which has no places suitable for action such as mountains and forests, one should suffice with urban forces and collaborators,” the statement said.Islamist fighters “need a strong Islamic intelligence apparatus to confront the dangers surrounding clandestine action in cities.”The guerrillas in charge of preparing operations should include people “with links to the mafia or other smugglers, because the latter have experience and can be very useful,” the statement said.The recent attacks have not been limited to hit and run death squad operations.Four gunmen killed 22 people including Westerners in a shooting rampage and hostage-taking drama in the eastern oil city of Al-Khobar on May 29 and 30.And on May 1 two Americans, two Britons, an Australian and a Canadian were killed at a petrochemical plant in the Red Sea industrial port of Yanbu.The last major bombing, long the preferred Al-Qaeda method of attack, occurred on April 21 when six people died at a security forces building in the capital.Osama bin Laden’s network has been blamed for repeated attacks on compounds housing Westerners and Arabs in Saudi Arabia over the past year, starting on May 12, 2003 in Riyadh when 35 people died, including nine Americans and 12 suicide assailants.Another 17 people died in a car bombing of a compound in the capital on November 8.An alleged Al-Qaeda statement published on an Islamist website on Monday vowed to attack Western airlines and sites frequented by Westerners in the Arabian Peninsula.- Nampa-AFPA witness told AFP that the man was pursued from a nearby clinic by two or three gunmen, who pumped him full of bullets inside his home before fleeing the scene.He suffered nine bullet wounds to the head.Police were left to remove the body.Alerted around 2:30 pm (1130 GMT) to “shooting in a house in the east of Riyadh”, security forces went to the scene where “they saw that the house was inhabited by an American national, who was killed in the incident”, Riyadh’s police chief told the official SPA news agency.Suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen shot dead an Irish cameraman and gravely wounded a BBC correspondent on Sunday evening.Newspapers reported that one attacker also ran after the wounded correspondent firing off more bullets and leaving him for dead.The pair were filming in a slum district notorious as a hotbed of extremism, close to the home of a former wanted militant who was himself shot dead by security forces in the same area last December.On June 1, an American serviceman escaped with minor injuries when his vehicle came under fire on a highway outside Riyadh.A German national was shot dead outside a bank in Riyadh on May 22.The shootings directly follow threats bearing all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda and declaring a mission to “cleanse” the Arabian Peninsula of “infidels”.A statement in the name of the Al-Qaeda chief in Saudi Arabia surfaced on May 27 urging his followers to wage an urban guerrilla war of assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.The “execution group” or “strike force” in each four-tiered cell should be “trained to carry out operations inside cities, including assassinations, abductions, bombings, sabotage, raids and the liberation of hostages,” said the communique attributed to Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin and posted on www.qal3ah.org.It went on in great detail to outline how each guerilla cell should be composed of four groups: a field command, an intelligence-gathering group, a third assigned to prepare the equipment and groundwork for operations, and a fourth that would execute the attacks and would be made up of two to four members.”In a country which has no places suitable for action such as mountains and forests, one should suffice with urban forces and collaborators,” the statement said.Islamist fighters “need a strong Islamic intelligence apparatus to confront the dangers surrounding clandestine action in cities.”The guerrillas in charge of preparing operations should include people “with links to the mafia or other smugglers, because the latter have experience and can be very useful,” the statement said.The recent attacks have not been limited to hit and run death squad operations.Four gunmen killed 22 people including Westerners in a shooting rampage and hostage-taking drama in the eastern oil city of Al-Khobar on May 29 and 30.And on May 1 two Americans, two Britons, an Australian and a Canadian were killed at a petrochemical plant in the Red Sea industrial port of Yanbu.The last major bombing, long the preferred Al-Qaeda method of attack, occurred on April 21 when six people died at a security forces building in the capital.Osama bin Laden’s network has been blamed for repeated attacks on compounds housing Westerners and Arabs in Saudi Arabia over the past year, starting on May 12, 2003 in Riyadh when 35 people died, including nine Americans and 12 suicide assailants.Another 17 people died in a car bombing of a compound in the capital on November 8.An alleged Al-Qaeda statement published on an Islamist website on Monday vowed to attack Western airlines and sites frequented by Westerners in the Arabian Peninsula.- Nampa-AFP