Saudis link 4 bombing suspects to al-Qaida

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Four suspects apparently linked to al-Qaida have been arrested on suspicion of having advance knowledge of the three lethal bombings here last week, the Saudi interior minister said Sunday, and three of the suicide bombers have been identified as members of a cell uncovered just days before the attacks.

The comments by the interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, were the strongest official confirmation to date that al-Qaida, the worldwide terrorist network founded by Osama bin Laden, may have guided the attacks here. From the beginning, though, the pattern of the attacks — with three nearly simultaneous explosions at separate locations — was seen as a strong indication of al-Qaida's work.

In Morocco, the same pattern unrolled in Casablanca, with five explosions Friday night. There too, investigators rounding up dozens of suspects were grappling with the question of whether it was an al-Qaida operation or something more distinctly domestic.

Nayef said there was no immediate known link between the two attacks, although he noted that the investigations are still in their early stages. He said the four men arrested in Saudi Arabia had known about the May 12 bombings beforehand but had not participated. An aide said that the men had been captured within the past three days.

"All indications point to that," the prince said when asked if the men were al-Qaida members, but he refused to elaborate. He said that three of the corpses of the nine suicide bombers had been identified thus far and they too had been linked to al-Qaida. The attackers killed 25 people.

The three attackers identified were members of a heavily armed cell whose safe house, near one of the compounds attacked, was raided by police on May 6. The men in the house eluded capture after a gunbattle, but the police later published pictures of 19 cell members.

Nayef played down the U.S. role in the investigation in Saudi Arabia. At his news conference Sunday he said that Saudi Arabia welcomed the technical assistance but suggested that U.S. investigators sent here would be merely observers visiting the sites.

Other Saudi officials pledged that there would complete cooperation with the United States. The question of cooperation has strained relations in the past, especially after the bombing of the Khobar towers in 1996 killed 19 servicemen.