Riyadh blasts: death toll 'rises to 34'

Baghdad - Saudi authorities today said that five more people, including one Briton, have been confirmed dead in the Riyadh suicide blasts, bringing the death toll to at least 34 people. 

An interior ministry statement on the state-run Saudi Press Agency listed the five dead as a Briton, an Irish woman, an Australian of Lebanese origin and a Filipino. The fifth body remained unindentified.

Initially, the ministry had put the death toll from Monday's attack at 29 people, including nine suicide bombers and at least seven Americans.

The latest figures, and the confirmation of the first British fatality, came as the Foreign Office announced that two Britons are still unaccounted for after the explosions. "We are in touch with next of kin, but we are not releasing any further details," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

Sir Derek Plumbly, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that talks about tightening up security for the British expatriate community, which has been deeply shaken by the attacks, were under way.

Describing the feelings of British people living near the scene of the bombings, he told BBC Breakfast: "I think they are shocked. It is a large community, and it is very well-established. There have been security incidents here in the past, but not in the sense that they have been taken to people's homes, in their compounds.

"A big focus at this point in time, and I will be discussing this with the minister responsible for internal security later in the day, is very much on what more can be done to enhance the security of the people who do choose to stay."

Almost 200 people, including six Britons, were injured in the attacks, in which cars packed with explosives crashed through security gates and detonated at compounds housing foreign workers.

Washington has said that they were probably carried out by the terror group al-Qaida, and has ordered non-essential diplomatic staff to leave the country. The Saudi ambassador to London also said that al-Qaida was to blame.

The Foreign Office said there was a "high threat" of further attacks, and warned British nationals against all but essential travel to Saudi Arabia. It also authorised the voluntary departure of non-essential members of its staff from the Middle Eastern kingdom.

A US diplomat in Riyadh said that the embassy would organise evacuation flights for any of the 40,000 or so Americans living in Saudi, which is the world's largest oil exporter. The state department also told dependants and non-essential staff at the US missions in the kingdom to leave.

Following the terror attacks, British Airways cancelled overnight stays in the kingdom for its crews. Crews operating flights between London and Riyadh and London and Jeddah will stay overnight in Larnaca, Cyprus, for the time being, adding about two hours to the flying time for each return flight.

The hunt for the suspected al-Qaida terror cell that co-ordinated the attacks intensified today after the US president, George Bush, vowed that the perpetrators would "learn the meaning of American justice".

Around 2,000 Saudi civil defence workers searched for evidence of the attackers' identities and methods. Investigators wearing surgical gloves sifted through the rubble at the al-Hamra compound in north-eastern Riyadh, where one of the three car bombs left a crater six metres wide and one metre deep.

FBI director Robert Mueller said that a team of agents would leave for Saudi Arabia today to help the authorities, who lost track of 19 al-Quaida suspects last week after a shootout in the capital.

A high-level Saudi security official said that the army was erecting checkpoints all over the vast desert kingdom. "By the will of God, we will find them. We are introducing tough new security measures and ask everyone to cooperate," the official told Reuters.

Confusion surrounding the exact number of casualties yesterday appears to have stemmed from the office of Dick Cheney, the US vice-president. Reuters reported at 7pm BST that Mr Cheney had said "some 91 people were killed", despite Saudi officials saying only 29 had died by then.

Mr Cheney did not say how he reached the figure, but Reuters reported at 8.30pm yesterday that US officials said the vice-president had simply "repeated unconfirmed reports".

· Meanwhile, a bomb today wounded several people in a Yemeni court where a suspected al-Qaida militant was condemned to death five days ago for killing three US missionaries, security officials said.

The explosion ripped through the courtroom in Jibla, 125 miles south of the Yemeni capital San'a, at 8.50 local time (550 GMT), police said. They said that a judge was injured, while witnesses said they saw victims being taken away in ambulances. It was not immediately clear whether anybody was killed. Police said they had detained a man in connection with the explosion.

On Saturday, the court condemned Abed Abdul Razak Kamel, 30, to death after convicting him of the December killings at the Southern Baptist-run hospital in Jibla. Yemeni security officials have said they believe Kamel belonged to a terrorist cell linked to al-Qaida. -- Guardian News

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