Saudi forces seize explosives near Riyadh

Saudi security forces Monday seized a car rigged with explosives north of Riyadh, according to security officials, in the same area where witnesses earlier spoke of a fierce gun-battle.
Security men, alerted to the presence of wanted terror suspects in the Al-Nassim neighbourhood of the town of Buraida, "raided a house where they seized a car bomb, but without arresting any suspect," one security official told AFP, requesting anonymity.
Another senior security source insisted there had been "no exchange of gunfire."
According to witnesses, clashes broke out in the Al-Nassim residential area around 1030 GMT when security men were searching for suspects.
The gun-battle, which continued intermittently for some five hours, was at its most intense around 1200 GMT when helicopters hovered above the area and security forces systematically searched for the suspects, the witnesses said.
But the security source insisted that the witnesses were mistaken and that the security forces had fired teargas only during the raid in which they seized the booby-trapped vehicle.
Saudi security forces killed four suspects during an operation in Buraida on Thursday, in which two security men were also killed, the interior ministry said.
The town lies in the Al Qassim region, some 320 kilometres (200 miles) north-west of the capital.
Security forces who raided the suspects' "den" in the town found two pick-up trucks, one of which was used in an April 20 shooting in Buraida in which a security man was critically wounded, the ministry said.
They also found bomb-making equipment in the hideout, some of which was similar to that found in booby-trapped vehicles which were found and defused, it said.
Authorities have reported several seizures of booby-trapped cars in recent weeks, foiling potential suicide bombings of the kind which have rocked Riyadh in the past year. Some 60 people have been killed and hundreds injured in the bombings, the latest of which targeted a security force building in the capital on April 21.
On May 1, the violence broadened to the country's key oil infrastructure, with the deaths of six Westerners in a shooting rampage at a petrochemical plant in the industrial port of Yanbu.
On Saturday, a German national working for Saudi Arabian Airlines was shot dead by unknown gunmen in eastern Riyadh. The incident is still being investigated.