Commando raid end Saudi hostage crisis
 The hostage situation in eastern Saudi town Khobar came to an end when Saudi commandos stormed the luxury compound and killed two and captured the remaining militants, freeing the hostages. Reportedly, nine of the hostages had earlier had their throats slit when they attempted to escape.
The standoff started when the terrorists in military uniforms attacked three compounds in Khobar, leaving at least ten people dead, including one Briton, an American and an Italian. The militants then took a significant amount of hostages in the top floor of the luxury Oasis housing compound. This standoff ended when around 40 Saudi commandos dropped down on the roof from overhead helicopters, eliminating the terrorists.
It actually surprises me if Saudi Arabia has commandos capable of this kind of effective operations. Rather few countries have been able to pull off such hostage resque lightning strike operations successfully, and Saudi security forces have been far from impressive in the past, to put it mildly. Egypt has probably the most capable Arab armed forces in the region, and their elite "Force 777" commandos horribly botched up the Egypt Air Flight 648 hostage rescue attempt on Malta in 1985.
Wonder if the commandos used today were 'borrowed' from the UK or the US. I have on good authority that the British SAS has done similar things in the past, pretending to be part of the native country's armed forces and letting them take the credit for a succesfull raid. This operation appears to be taken from the SAS rulebook, at any rate. If it is as successful as it first appears, that is. The information from the Saudi Kingdom leaves something to be desired, to put it mildly.
Update: CNN reports Saudi officials say "most" of the around 50 hostages were saved. I hope it's better than that! The Saudi embassy in Washington says seven Americans were rescued, two of them injured. I hope that better represents the ratio.
Al-Qaeda has allegedly taken responsibility for the attack, further alienating most Arabs. One of the dead were a 10 year old Egyptian boy.
The boy's father gave an emotional statement to the Arab media.
"What is his guilt? That's not only my child, this is an innocent child going to school," the father said. "What is this? Terrorism, Islam, whatever. Those are not Muslims."
They are the enemies of the west, true, but they are even more dangerous enemies of Muslims worldwide. The more people wake up to this fact, the better.
Update 2: It was definately not the SAS that did this raid! Three out of four (or five?) gunmen actually managed to escape, according to radio reports. The total death toll is at least 19, but most of those died before the commandos attacked.
I just can't believe that the terrorists got away, being completely surrounded. In fact, that is a lie. This is what happens every time terrorists are surrounded in Saudi Arabia, according to Saudi blogger Alhamedi. He still hasn't commented on this tragedy, btw, his excellent blog is only updated occasionally.
I guess the terrorists getting away cannot be blamed on the commandos, more on the normal security forces surrounding the compound. They are reputedly incompetent, corrupt, terrorist-friendly or combinations of all three. Yeah, the operation was botchered, but not as badly as we could have expected...
Update 3: Death toll at 22. Victims are from all over the world. Three out of four terrorists escaped, but one, their leader, was arrested.
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter. This production is absolutely dependent on foreign oil workers. The objective of al-Qaeda is to scare them out, and Saudi security has made it clear they cannot protect foreigners or defeat the terrorists. The oil price is already at a soaring $40/barrel, very bad news for the world economy in a recovery stage, and this means it may be getting worse.
It's not as if it's easy to sympathise with the Saudi government and its royal family, not to mention the detestable Wahabi form of Islam that is the origin of a lot of this mess to begin with. No doubt, Islamist militants draw a lot of support not only from conservatives but also others who are so disgusted with the Saudi rulers that they see Islamism as the lesser evil.
2:45:34 PM 
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