A video grab shows Saudi police standing near a burnt vehicle after the attack in Yanbu on May 1, 2004. (Reuters TV/Reuters)
Further details about yesterday's shooting in Saudi Arabia.
YANBU, Saudi Arabia (AP) - More than 100 non-Saudi workers were set to leave the country Sunday, one day after militants sprayed gunfire inside an oil contractor's office, killing at least six people before tying a body to the bumper of a car and dragging it past horrified students at a high school. Two Americans and three other Westerners were among the dead.Bjorn Edlund, spokesman for multinational engineering company ABB, told The Associated Press that all of its non-Saudi workers in Yanbu had asked to leave. More than 100 employees and their families - most of them American but including Britons, Australians, Filipinos and Indians - were set to depart in the next few days, Edlund said from Zurich, Switzerland.
Police killed the four gunmen in a shootout after a car chase. One of the attackers was reported to be on the Saudi kingdom's list of most-wanted terrorists, many of them suspects in 2003 suicide attacks on foreign housing compounds in the capital, Riyadh. The two attacks were blamed on al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden's terror network.
Students told the AP on Sunday that bearded men drove a car drove into the parking lot of the Ibn Hayyan Secondary Boys School as classes began Saturday, the start of the school week. They fired into the air to attract students' attention, then urged the boys to go to an Iraqi city where U.S. troops are battling insurgents.
"God is great! God is great! Come join your brothers in Fallujah!" they shouted. Pointing to the bloodied and badly damaged corpse, his clothes shredded, they screamed: "This is the president of America."
Students and school officials said some of the boys ran crying from the scene. An 18-year-old student, who gave only his first name, Rayyan, said he saw three bearded men in the car.
"I was shocked and terrified when I saw them. I just froze. I didn't know what to do," he said, his voice shaking. "I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep the whole night. I have been having nightmares. ...This thing has changed my life forever."
"This is not right," he said. "This is un-Islamic."
What exactly? Terrorism? Or terrorism against Muslims in Saudi Arabia?
It's un-Islamic to drag the bodies through the street. It's ok to kill the kufr but you aren't supposed to mutilate dead bodies. That's what he was objecting to.
A note to those who don't know me. Please put a vocal "tone of complete disgust" in the above post. I was thinking of the Muslim clerics that condemned the mutilation of bodies in Fallujah without condemning the murders.
It will be fascinating to see how the Saudi economy runs without the technical experts from the West. Perhaps oil production will suffer; certainly that possibility must be factored in to the real cost of oil, which should be reflected not in the price, but in the taxes the government should place on that oil. Since, in any case, the world's reserves will begin to decline by 2010, why wait to ease the pain?
By internalizing the real cost of fossil fuels and making them ever less attractive, while nuclear and solar energy become ever more attractive, and by depriving the Saudis of the financial wherewithal to support mosques and madrasas, to buy diplomats and journalists, to accumulate and distribute arms -- think of it.
Fight the Jihad. Save the Environnment. All at one and the same time.
Here is one way to combat islamic terrorism and the spread of fundamentalist ( read:standard) Islam.If you really, really don't need an SUV
to get to the supermarket with only one passenger
(you) in the vehicle, please trade it in for a good, efficient, comfortable 4 cylinder car.If you are fortunate enough to have oodles of money,
just have it wrecked.
I have it on good authority that a 4 cylinder
Honda, Ford,Nissan, Chevy,etc will get you to the supermarket just as well as an eight passenger SUV.Of course, if you are physically handicapped, have lots of very young kids,reside somewhere in western North Dakota, 75 miles from the nearest supermarket and you need to buy 6 months of groceries at once, well, O.K. you need a large SUV. You will also need a large, powerful ISLAMIC OIL -GUZZLING SUV if you plan to drive up to the top of K-2.(as advertised in the car ads on TV)
I think it is extremely unjustified to call any action that results in the death of non muslim civialians an act of jihad, and to quote any muslim extremist that says that "we are doing jihad" a "brave mujahid". The word jihad has a very deep meaning and to call any lunatic who kill people a mujahid is just plain ignorance
Tarek,
Then the Muslim world is full of lunatics.
jay
Tarek,
It isn't just nuts in the street that call for jihad. Ever heard of this guy? He is an important person in saudi:
WASHINGTON DC) April 26, 2002 …The Saudi Information Agency has obtained a tape by prominent government official cleric Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik calling for enslaving Jewish women. The tape is called “a Monkey Desecrates Mosque,” and was delivered in a Riyadh government mosque. The monkey refers to Jews.
Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don’t you enslave their women? Why don’t you wage jihad? Why don’t you pillage them?
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/2002_04_21_corner-archive.asp#85038222
Is that official enough for you? If not, ask the imam:
We do accept that the Jihaad in Palestine is a true Jihaad. However, don’t allow your emotions to overcome your common sense.
and Allah Ta'ala Knows Best
Mufti Muhammad Kadwa
FATWA DEPT
http://www.islam.tc/ask-imam/view.php?q=7944
YANBU, Saudi Arabia - The U.S. ambassador traveled to this Saudi oil-industry city Monday with a simple message for the gathered Americans: Go home — we cannot protect you.
Leave the jihadis to their murderous comrades. Lets see them pump oil.