pray for Saudi Arabia and other troubled Arab nations Pentecost Sunday, May 30, Saudi forces stormed a housing compound in the Persian Gulf City freeing dozens of American and other foreign hostages, including Christians, held by Islamic militants since Saturday.
However help came to late for up to half of the estimated 50 hostages held inside the Oasis compound in Khobar, a housing complex for foreign workers, as they were killed by Islamic gunmen, who also apparently forced some hostages to convert to Islam, BosNewsLife monitored.
A statement purported to be from an al-Qaeda-linked group and posted on an Islamic website, said its militants had "slaughtered" an Italian and a Swedish hostage, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported. Among the 22 killed were also Asians and at least nine hostages who had their "throats cut by the kidnappers when they tried to escape at night by the stairs," before the rescue operation began, Nijar Hijazin, a Jordanian computer engineer, told Agence France Press (AFP).
He said he was one of the 25 hostages who were freed. The group also included Americans and at least five Lebanese people, some of whom were forced to abandon their faith in Christ, said Lebanon’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Chammat, in an interview with The Associated Press (AP) news agency.
One of them, Orora Naoufal, said she cowered in her apartment with her 4-year-old son for five hours after a brief encounter with two of the gunmen, whom she described as clean-shaven and wearing military uniforms. She told AP by telephone that the gunmen asked her where the "infidels" and foreigners were, and whether she was Muslim or Christian.
"I replied: ‘I am Lebanese and there are no foreigners here.’" She said the gunmen told her to "Go convert to Islam, and cover up and go back to your country."
Saudi authorities removed nine bodies from the apartment complex, AFP reported, citing its reporter on the scene. Among those killed was at least one American and an Egyptian described as the son of an Apicorp employee, news reports said. Apicorp is the investment arm of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Countries.
INDUSTRY COMPOUNDS
One of the targeted oil industry compounds contains offices and apartments for the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation, or Apicorp, and the other (the Petroleum Center building)houses various international firms.
Other offices include a joint venture among Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Total SA and Saudi Aramco; Lukoil Holdings of Russia; and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, news reports said. All of those employees were apparently safe although it wasn’t clear whether other companies had accounted for their employees.
A U.S. embassy official in Riyadh has called on its nationals to leave the country. "It’s the bad guys that choose the time- table," embassy spokesman Bob Keith said, the Bloomberg news agency reported.
BOOBY TRAPS
The rescue operation began early Sunday, May 29, with special security forces running on the roof of the high rise building after a previous attempt to storm the building was abandoned when booby traps were discovered, Saudi officials said.
Three security forces helicopters had earlier arrived and dropped off the commandos. Eyewitnesses and reporters said gunfire, which was also heard sporadically overnight, rang out again and that within a few hours, the standoff was over.
Up to seven gunmen were believed to be insight of the compound and one official was quoted as saying by news wrires that one had been arrested and that two were in the process of being arrested.
AL-QAIDA GROUP
The attack, by an al-Qaida-linked group began Saturday morning when gunmen in military-style dress opened fire on security forces at two oil industry compounds in Khobar, 250 miles (about 400 kilometers) northeast of the capital Riyadh.
The assailants then fled up the street, taking some 45-60 hostages insight the complex.
It was the second deadly assault this month against the Saudi oil industry and came amid oil prices driven to new highs partly by fears that the Saudi kingdom — the world’s largest oil producer — is unable to protect itself from terrorists, news reports said.
This second deadly assault against foreigners in less than a month was also expected to increase fear among the country’s minority Christians and Western believers in the strict Islamic nation. Official Clyde Meador of the U.S.-based International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention, said this this year’s "Day of Prayer and Fasting for World Evangelization 2004" spearheaded by his organization was focused on the Arab peninsula.
GOSPEL
"As we look around the world and look at those who have least access to the gospel, this certainly is a group of people who have very little access," the Evangelical oriented Agape Press news agency quoted him as saying saying.
Meador said there are some 50-million people living in the seven countries of the Arabian Peninsula, which include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. "A couple of those countries just absolutely do not allow any expression of Christianity at all. Christian churches are banned," he said, an apparent reference to countries such as Saudi Arabia.
"Demographically, the people run the gamut from wealthy Gulf Arabs to poverty-stricken Yemenis, and from devout Saudi Muslims to demon-fearing Omanis," Agape Press observed. Also, within the region is a place sacred to Islam — Mecca, the Saudi Arabian city where Muhammad is said to have written much of the Quran, and which Muslims must face when they pray.
RELATIONSHIP
As Shawn Hendricks of Baptist Press observed in a recent article, in most areas of the Arabian Peninsula, 100 percent of the population claims to be Muslim. And although the people vary in their physical and economic needs, the writer notes, "all share the same spiritual need – to have a relationship with Jesus Christ."
"There simply is not anything close to an adequate access to the gospel for the peoples of that part of the world, so it is more than appropriate for Christians to be praying that doors would open and that those peoples could have access to the good news of Jesus," added Meador, who also asked individual Christians and families to pray and fast.
The emphasis of the Day of Prayer and Fasting is "That all peoples may know Him," and the theme selected for 2004 is "Go in God’s Power." Agape Press commented that it was "a reminder that the key to effective Christian witnessing and other missionary endeavors is the empowering of the Holy Spirit."
