This shootout was so long and intense that it prompted al-Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula?s (AQAP) mouthpiece, Global Islamic Media, to call it “another Fallujah” (Intel Report) in a “news report” they issued on April 5, 2005. The identities of all 10 militants who have been killed in the battle have yet to be confirmed, but authorities believe that crucial al-Qaeda leaders Saud bin al-Otaibi and Abdul Kareem al-Mojati are among the dead.

Of the two, al-Mojati is the biggest bag for Saudi security forces. The final member of the group?s original leadership at large, al-Mojati, was believed to have been hiding out in his native Morocco . Al-Mojati was probably the last or near-to-last member of the group to have worked in person with Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. When Bin Laden gave the order to former group leader Yousif al-Aiyeri to build an al-Qaeda network in Saudi Arabia , al-Mojati was appointed al-Aiyeri?s chief strategist. With guidance from Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, he helped al-Aiyeri set up the five cells that made up the original group in the Kingdom. According to a report by Anthony Cordesman and Nawaf al-Obaid at the Center for Strategic International Studies, al-Mojati left the group following a dispute with Bin Laden and Zawahiri about when to activate the network and commence attacks in the Kingdom. Al-Mojati reportedly believed that the spring of 2003, when the group launched its first attack, was fatally premature timing for the underdeveloped network. He was thought to have left the group at that time and returned to Morocco, where he masterminded the Casablanca attacks .