Briton among dead in Saudi bomb blasts

A Briton and an Irish woman were killed in the suicide bomb attacks in Riyadh, Saudi officials said.

The death toll from the bombings, which have been linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terror group, has now risen to 34.

The latest figure includes nine suicide bombers who targeted foreign compounds in the Saudi Arabian capital late on Monday night.

Five other dead, adding to an earlier figure of 29, were an Australian of Lebanese origin, a Briton, a Filipino, an Irish woman and an unidentified person, the Saudi Interior Ministry said today.

About 2,000 Saudi civil defence workers searched for evidence of the attackers' identities and methods today.

Investigators wearing surgical gloves sifted through the rubble at the al-Hamra compound in north-eastern Riyadh. There a car-bomb had left a crater 20 feet wide and three feet deep.

President George Bush spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah pledging US support for the kingdom's "fight against terrorism."

The United States ordered most of its nonessential diplomats and family members to leave Saudi Arabia and sent FBI agents to Riyadh.

A US diplomat said that while Saudi civil defence workers had finished looking for survivors and bodies, the embassy was still "trying to figure out how many Americans have died."

The State Department in Washington has put the American death toll at eight.

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