Internet claim links al-Qaida with Riyadh ambush
A statement that has surfaced on the internet, purportedly from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network, claims responsibility for an attack on two American military personnel in Riyadh.
The statement, dated Wednesday and signed, “Al-Qaida’s network in the Arab Peninsula”, said the group was responsible for a shooting that day that targeted two Americans outside a compound in the Saudi Arabian capital.
The US embassy had said on Wednesday that gunmen fired on two American military personnel near a Saudi national guard compound, slightly injuring a driver. Saudi authorities said the wounded man was Saudi.
However, the online statement claimed the shooting killed two Americans and seriously wounded a third. It said the attack was carried out by mujahedeen, or fighters, from the “Fallujah Squad” who escaped.
Fallujah is the Iraqi city that is a centre of the Sunni Muslim insurgency and where fighters fought with US Marines in April.
An American embassy spokesman declined to comment on the alleged al-Qaida statement.
The statement said the group “ambushed a group of US officers who were riding in three civilian cars” and that those officers worked at the Prince Sultan air base, “home to the command and control base for the aggressing US forces”.
Until the Iraq war began in March American forces used the Prince Sultan base to enforce a “no-fly zone” over southern Iraq that was designed to deny Saddam’s forces flight rights in the region.
US officials have acknowledged that the base was used in the second Iraq war.
In April 2003, however, the US army announced it was shifting operations from there to the al-Udeid air base in Qatar.
