Link: Al-Qaeda chief killed in clash - Saudi interior ministry UPDATE

08.18.2005, 11:19 AM

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RIYADH (AFX) - Saudi security forces have shot dead one of the country's top Al-Qaeda leaders in the holy city of Medina, adding to a toll of the group's successive chiefs gunned down in shootouts.

The clash that killed Saleh al-Ufi coincided with another operation in the north of the capital Riyadh and was the first of its kind since Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz assumed the throne of the oil-rich kingdom this month.

It came days after Western governments warned that fresh terror attacks may be imminent in Saudi Arabia, where suspected Al-Qaeda militants launched a spate of bombings and shootings in May 2003, many targeting Westerners.

An interior ministry statement carried by state media said Ufi was one of two members of the 'deviant group' -- official terminology for Al-Qaeda -- killed when security forces returned fire as they tracked presumed extremists in Medina.

Ufi, one of the kingdom's top suspected militants, was one of two men from a wanted list of 26 still at large. The other, Taleb al-Taleb, remains in hiding.

Ufi was reported to have replaced Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, the notorious chief of 'Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula', who was shot dead in a gunbattle in Riyadh in June 2004, shortly after his group posted gruesome pictures on the Internet of a beheaded American engineer they had abducted.

Things are not going so hot for Al Qaeda in Arabia. Too bad! I feel SO SAD -- that there are still ANY of the bastards left alive.