Saudi raid kills six suspected militants

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi police said they raided a farm where militants were holed up Monday, touching off a battle with firearms and grenades that killed six suspects and two officers.

Almost weekly raids since militants staged bombing attacks in the capital in mid-May have revealed an extensive network of alleged terrorist cells and weapons caches across Saudi Arabia.

The latest raid came as U.S. lawmakers debate a report that accuses Saudi Arabia of not doing enough to counter terrorism. Some legislators charged the Bush administration classified part of the report that contained harsher criticisms of Saudi Arabia.

Efforts praised

At a Cabinet meeting Monday, King Fahd praised the efforts of Saudi security officials, saying the raid showed the government's determination "to deter anyone who would consider violating the security of the nation and its citizens," the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

Saudi officials have staged a series of raids since attacks killed 25 people and nine militants in the capital, Riyadh, on May 12. More than 200 suspects have been reported arrested and more than a dozen killed in the crackdown.

The latest raid was in al-Qassim, about 220 miles northwest of Riyadh, state-run TV quoted an Interior Ministry statement as saying.

Fighting erupted after the suspects, armed with guns and hand grenades, refused an order to surrender when police surrounded the farm, the statement said. One suspected militant and eight officers were wounded.

, and four people were arrested for harboring the suspects.

Mansour al-Nogaidan, a journalist for the newspaper al-Riyadh in the region, said al-Qassim has long been a hotbed of extremism.

"With this shootout today and the discovery of hidden arms there last week, it seems that there are many sympathizers for militants from the region and in the region," he said.

On July 21, police arrested 16 people for alleged links to al-Qaida, the terror network blamed for the Riyadh bombings and the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Officers also found an arsenal of weapons that included 20 tons of bomb-making chemicals, detonators, rocket-propelled grenades and rifles at farms in al-Qassim, Riyadh and the Eastern Province.

Even before last week's congressional report on terrorism, the U.S. government had been pressing Saudi Arabia to do more to curb Islamic militancy. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis, and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia to a prominent family, although the kingdom revoked his citizenship in 1994.

Khalid al-Matrafi, deputy chief editor at the newspaper al-Watan, said the recent arrests and raids appeared to be the result of intelligence gained from jailed suspects rather than U.S. pressure.

"This is not a case of an action and a reaction; this has nothing to do with the Congress report. It has to do with detailed information received by the Interior Ministry about armed assailants," al-Matrafi said.

The unclassified version of the U.S. report said one suspected al-Qaida organizer still at large paid many of the expenses of two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and "had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia." It did not say if Saudi government funds were involved.

Many Saudis say that doesn't mean the Saudi government knowingly supported al-Qaida terrorists.

"The Saudi authorities might have, without their knowledge, donated money that ended up with terrorist organizations, but that doesn't mean they're responsible for what happened," said Turki al-Hamad, who writes for the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

"By this same logic, the United States is responsible for founding al-Qaida because they initially financed and supported what at the time they called freedom fighters fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan" in the 1980s.

Others believe some employees of Saudi charities helped funnel donations to terrorist groups, some knowingly and others unwittingly.

Saudi Arabia is one of the world's leading nations in charity donations, said Abdullah al-Tayer, co-founder of the Washington-based Saudi Studies Center.

Saudi officials have angrily rejected the criticism contained in the congressional report.

"We are confident about ourselves and it is just a matter of mere talk," the defense minister, Prince Sultan, was quoted by the Saudi Press Agency as saying Sunday. "The American administration under the leadership of (President) Bush has declared officially that the kingdom is not a party in these issues."