RIYADH, April 5: At least nine gunmen including two most-wanted Al Qaeda leaders have been killed in fierce fighting with security forces that raged in the kingdom for a third day on Tuesday, officials and media reports said. The gunbattles that erupted on Sunday after Saudi security men laid siege to a house in the northern town of Al-Ras are the deadliest since a wave of deadly violence began two years ago.

Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television reported on Monday that two leaders of a Saudi Al Qaeda cell on Riyadh’s list of 26 most-wanted had been killed, identifying them as Saudi Saud al-Otaibi and Moroccan Abdel Karim al-Mojati.

Two more militants were killed on Tuesday, an interior ministry spokesman said.

“During the past few hours, two armed men were killed and a third gave himself up to security forces,” spokesman Brig Mansur al-Turki said, adding that several members of the security forces had been injured, four of them seriously.

“We cannot for the moment reveal the identities of those killed or arrested,” he said. “According to reports, these leaders... are among them, but we need to confirm it.”

The latest deaths bring to at least nine the number of militants killed in three days of fighting in Al-Rass, which lies about 320km north of Riyadh. Officials had said on Monday that seven people were killed.—AFP