RIYADH - On Sunday, Saudi authorities identified two men killed in an October 13 shootout in the southern province of Jizan as wanted Al-Qaeda militants who crossed over from Yemen.
Disguised as women in shroud-like black abayas, they were caught carrying suicide bomb vests, explosives, and automatic weapons in a car for attacks on yet-unknown targets inside the kingdom.
The men were named as Yousef al-Shehri and Abdullah Asiri.
Asiri had come from Yemen pretending to turn himself into Prince Mohammed bin Nayef when he detonated the bomb, which killed himself but caused no other serious injuries.
So far this year the Saudi government has uncovered extensive weapons caches and arrested dozens of militants in several cells, all linked to Al-Qaeda, according to domestic and foreign security sources.
In August, 44 people, all but one of them Saudis, were arrested, and about 70 machine-guns, 31,000 rounds of ammunition and 376 electronic detonation devices unearthed from caches in Riyadh and in the desert north of the capital.
After the 2003-2006 campaign of bombings and assassinations that killed between 150 and 200 Saudis and foreigners, Al-Qaeda has resumed its efforts to undermine the all-powerful Saudi royal family, said Anwar Eshki, chairman of the Middle East Centre for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah.
"They didn't change their strategy or tactics ...They want to kill the leaders of Saudi Arabia," Eshki said. "Before they concentrated just on suicide bombing. But now they have tried political assassination."
The arrest of the 44 constituted a major roundup, according to interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki.
Between 2003 and 2006, Qaeda launched dozens of bomb and assassination attacks against Saudis.
The new incidents show that the halt of attacks was only temporary.
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