4 killed in Saudi car bombing

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A suicide bomber attacked a security police building in the Saudi capital Wednesday, killing at least four other people and wounding 148, just days after the United States warned of a terrorist attack.\nFacades were torn off buildings revealing rooms still ablaze. Cars parked nearby were smashed by debris. Clouds of dust and black smoke rose from the seven-story building and settled over the neighborhood.\nA U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the attack had the hallmarks of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's terror group has used car bombs to carry out previous attacks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.\nA Saudi Interior Ministry statement said attackers tried to drive one vehicle into the General Security building, which housed the headquarters of Riyadh's traffic department in addition to some security police officials.\nThe driver exploded the car 100 feet from the gate, the Interior Ministry official said.\nThe Interior Ministry put the death toll at four: two police officers, an adult and an 11-year-old Syrian girl. The ministry statement did not include the suicide bomber, whose death was reported to The Associated Press by a security official.\nEarlier, officials from the three hospitals said nine people were killed.\nThe ministry statement said 148 people were wounded, according to the official Saudi Press Agency.\nA Saudi official told The Associated Press Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal about 30 minutes after the attack. The meeting was at the Foreign Ministry, which is close to the damaged General Security building in al-Nassiriyah, a central Riyadh neighborhood.\nSaudi Crown Prince Abdullah visited the wounded, one of them a young man who was unconscious and on a respirator. The prince stopped at the bedside of another young man who appeared alert and had no obvious injuries. A third wounded man wore camouflage.\n"Your duty is our pride. God will help us to defeat these people," Abdullah told one of the injured.\nThe General Security building, the administrative headquarters of the Saudi domestic security service, was severely damaged as were a number of homes in the neighborhood.\nGeneral Security oversees officers who investigate burglaries and murders, direct traffic and perform other basic police duties in the kingdom. Such officers have been on the front lines in a Saudi crackdown on Islamic militants, manning checkpoints as part of stepped-up security and occasionally engaging in fire fights with suspects.\nLast month, a purported al Qaeda message appeared on the Internet threatening Saudi police, members of the intelligence forces and other security agents. The message said targeting Saudi security agents "in their homes or workplace is a very easy matter."\nThe explosion, which occurred at about 2 p.m., hit when workers would have been leaving for the Saudi weekend.\nSaudi TV showed the General Security building, about seven floors, with its glass facade shattered and severe damage inside. Firefighters worked to extinguish the blazes, and more than 20 ambulances had arrived. Two helicopters flew above the site. Police blocked the area and evacuated the surrounding buildings.\nHanan Batteesha, an Egyptian woman, was with her two children, ages 11 and 14, when she heard a "big blast."\n"We heard wails and cries, then saw our neighbors running down the stairs," she said.\nBy the time they reached the ground floor, "the gate was damaged, windows started shattering and glass fell all over us," she said. "The fronts of the buildings around us were damaged, the air conditioners mangled and there was smoke everywhere."\nThe blast was heard and felt more than three miles away.\nIn an interview with the Saudi TV station Al-Ekhbaria, a leading Saudi cleric called the bombing "a dastardly criminal act."\n"How can they make these dastardly acts bring them closer to God?" Sheik Abdullah Al-Mutlaq said, apparently alluding to Islamic militants who are blamed for terrorist strikes in the kingdom.\nThe explosion came only days after Saudi authorities announced they had seized three booby-trapped SUVs loaded with a total of more than four tons of explosives that had apparently been abandoned by militants involved in a shootout with security forces.