DATE=11/9/2003

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=SAUDI BLASTS (S)

NUMBER=2-309613

BYLINE=JAMES MARTONE

DATELINE=CAIRO

CONTENT=

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INTRO: Saudi officials are blaming al-Qaida terrorists for a suicide bombing at a residential compound in Riyadh that killed at least five people and left more than 80 others wounded. Officials warn the death toll could rise. James Martone reports from V-O-A's Middle East Bureau in Cairo.

TEXT: Saudi officials say the explosions targeted the upscale (al-Muhaya) residential compound that housed mostly non-Saudi Arabs as well as some westerners in Riyadh. They say the death toll could rise once rescuers dig through the rubble of the complex.

Saudi State Television showed some of the wounded in a Riyadh hospital. One women, whose name was not given, told the T-V that she had been in her residence in the complex with her husband when they heard gunfire, then the blasts.

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We heard the sound of a pistol, she said, and that was it. Later we didn't know what happened, there was an explosion.

Another man, holding his small son in a blanket, said the boy was hit in the face by shattered window glass.

A Saudi Interior Ministry official says the blast - which occurred around midnight Saudi time - was similar to suicide bombings six months ago on residential western compounds in Riyadh. Officials said al-Qaida was also behind those attacks. (Signed)

NEB/JM/ALW/KBK