Saudi Gunmen Still Missing

The inability to find three of the suspected militants who killed 22 is a growing source of embarrassment for the Riyadh government. Authorities searched without success Monday for any sign of the missing suspected Islamic gunmen who terrorized oil company offices and housing compounds in this city over the weekend. Three of the assailants disappeared in a stolen car Sunday morning after killing 22 people, and have managed to evade a nationwide manhunt. Investigators spent Monday sifting through blood-stained rooms in a luxury resort compound where gunmen had taken about 50 hostages, many of them foreigners, and holed up for 25 hours while Saudi forces swarmed outside. Checkpoints, sandbags and soldiers had risen on the smooth highways stretching through the wastes of desert. So far, the fugitives remain elusive, and a source of growing embarrassment for the kingdom. Officials have spent the past days repeatedly insisting that they’re in control of security and capable of protecting their oil facilities. But they’ve also had to acknowledge that three gun-toting men managed to slip through the grip of hundreds of Saudi commandos and vanish seamlessly into a spare landscape of strip malls and coastal desert plains. Full Story