Saudi soldiers taking part in tracking down militants in the kingdom

RIYADH, April 13 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Four Saudi policemen were killed Tuesday, April 13, in a shootout with militants at a checkpoint north of the capital Riyadh, few hours after a similar firefight left one security man and a militant dead.

"An officer and three policemen were killed by armed men at the Um Sedrah checkpoint," a police source on the scene told Agence France-Presse (AFP), identifying the officer as Lieutenant Talal Manaa.

Earlier a police source said "armed extremists fired at the Sedrah checkpoint, on the road to Qassim, killing an officer and another policeman, and wounding four other members of the security forces."

The district of Qassim around the town of Buraydah lies some 320 kilometers (200 miles) from Riyadh.

Another officer said the attack was carried out at dawn by assailants who fired from a car.

The car's occupants "started shooting off automatic weapons when their vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint where police who were on guard had demanded they show their identity cards," he said.

The assailants then fled the scene, the officer added, without specifying how many men were in the car.

Security checkpoints have been in place for years on main roads around the kingdom's larger cities.

On Monday, a shootout in the Al-Faihaa neighborhood in the east of Riyadh killed one militant and a security man and wounded four other security personnel, said an Interior Ministry statement.

The militants used rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), "showing the ferocity of the extremists, who would rather die than surrender" to the authorities, an analyst in Riyadh told AFP of Monday's incident, requesting anonymity.

According to residents in the area, some seven suspects fled the scene after trading fire with security forces, who were deployed en masse in and around the area.

"An undetermined number of terrorists ... ran away to an unknown destination after using arms to forcefully seize the cars of residents," Al-Watan newspaper reported Tuesday.

After the clashes, an Interior Ministry official said a car "in which two individuals affiliated to the deviant group was spotted at 5:30 pm (1430 GMT)" Monday.

Security forces chased the two men in Al-Faihaa and exchanged fire with them before the car stopped in front of a house, "which turned out to be a den (of suspected militants)," he added.

"A group came out of the house and opened fire with various kinds of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, at the security forces," the official said.

One of the gunmen was killed and a member of the security forces "martyred", while four other security men sustained light wounds, he added.

Saudi authorities often refer to suspected sympathizers of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network as a "deviant group" that has strayed from the right path.

Several suspected militants, as well as security personnel, have been killed in similar shootouts, particularly in Riyadh, since a series of bombings against residential compounds in the capital killed 52 people in May and November 2003.

Hundreds more presumed extremists have been rounded up across the vast kingdom, and authorities have reported seizures of huge caches of weapons and explosives.

In their intensified hunt for suspected Al-Qaeda supporters, security forces on March 15, gunned down a Yemeni described as the network's head of operations for Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf.

Khaled Ali bin Haj, who ranked third on a 26-strong most-wanted list, was suspected of having ordered the Riyadh attacks, according to Saudi security sources.

The list has since gone down to 22 after three militants figuring on it were killed in clashes with security forces - one of whom had been only wounded but was left to die by his comrades, according to authorities - while a fourth turned himself in.