Six of the 11-member terrorist cell that yesterday claimed responsibility for the attack on the US consulate in the Saudi city of Jeddah are still at large, a Saudi security official said yesterday.
The official said five members of the cell took part in the assault, of whom four had died. While three of the dead had been identified, the identity of a fourth man who later died from his injuries was still being investigated.
| Son of a prominent family? |
But the official said the identity of a fifth gunman, who survived, was not being disclosed. Some officials have said the man may be Saleh al-Oufi, a central figure in al-Qaeda's operations in Saudi Arabia, though a senior Saudi security consultant denied this. Mr Oufi, who became a leading decision-maker in the terrorist group in June, is a former low-ranking soldier in the Saudi army. According to the Sawt al-Jihad Islamist website, which has distributed Saudi Islamist literature, he later joined Muslim forces in Afghanistan and Chechnya, before returning to Saudi Arabia. "This group had been chased in different parts of Western Province for the past two weeks," the security official said. "A few had been captured, and those who did the attack on the consulate were the ones who were left. There are another five or six others still at large," he said, adding that "even so, the group that is left are very limited in what they can do, though they have plans that are directed from [al-Qaeda] abroad".| Abroad where? NWFP, Teheran? |
In a statement posted on the internet, a group calling itself al-Qaeda of the Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula yesterday claimed responsibility for the operation, calling it the Falluja attack. It also claimed that two Americans were killed during the attack, though US officials have denied this, saying they were only lightly injured. The statement identified the attack closely with the battle between US forces and insurgents in Iraq, saying it was carried out by al-Qaeda's Martyr Abu Anas al-Shami Brigade. The brigade was named after Abu Anas al-Shami, an associate of the Iraq-based extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. According to the website, Mr Shami was killed in the recent fighting in the Iraqi city of Falluja.| I'm coming to the conclusion that this is one of the only reliable methods of determining whether an al-Q member is really dead; if he gets his own Martyrs' Brigade. |
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