Riyadh, May 18: Saudi authorities have arrested four people in the Riyadh suicide bombings, the Saudi interior minister told reporters today, adding that three of the attackers who died had been sought in an earlier Al-Qaeda probe.
The minister, Prince Nayef, offered no details on the arrests.
Nayef said investigators had been able to identify five of the badly mangled bodies of nine Saudi men believed to have carried out the May 12 attacks on three compounds housing foreigners in Riyadh. Of the five identified, three had been sought in the probe into a weapons cache found in the kingdom that had been linked to Al-Qaeda.
"We still need some time to identify all the characters," Nayef said.
In all, nine attackers and up to 25 others died in the bombings.
The Saudi government was seeking 19 suspects in connection with the May 6 weapons seizure from a site near one of the targeted compounds. The government had said the 19 were believed to be receiving orders directly from Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born dissident who leads Al-Qaeda, and had been planning to use the seized weapons to attack the Saudi royal family as well as American and British interests.
Bureau Report
