SAUDI ARABIA yesterday promised "very harsh and very swift" punishment of the bombers behind the attack on a US military complex that killed 19 Americans and wounded nearly 400 people.
But Saudi and US officials said they had little idea who carried out Tuesday's attack at the King Abdul Aziz air base in Khobar, the second in eight months against a US military target in the strictly Islamic kingdom.
Condemnation of the bombing flowed in from Saudi Arabia's Gulf Arab neighbours and western allies of the wealthy oil kingdom. President Clinton, who received a telephone call, from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia expressing condolences, vowed to punish the "murderous act".
The US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, changing the itinerary of a Middle East visit, left Cairo for Saudi Arabia to visit wounded servicemen.
"We will not rest until these terrorists are brought to justice. . . We will hunt them down," he said before leaving.
The explosion from a parked fuel truck ripped off the entire facade of a residential block and carved out a huge crater outside. Saudi television showed pictures of torn mattresses, mangled televisions and furniture and melted video players lodged among slabs of fallen concrete as bulldozers cleared away mounds of rubble and twisted metal.
The Saudi Interior Ministry and the Pentagon put the number of deaths at 19 Americans. The Pentagon said 64 Americans were seriously wounded, and the Saudis said a total of 386 people were hurt, including 147 Saudi nationals, 118 Bangladeshis, 109 Americans, four Egyptians, two Jordanians, two Indonesians and two Filipinas.
US air force planes left Germany for Saudi Arabia to begin picking up victims. The main US military hospital in Europe was also put on alert, a US air force spokesman said.
No group has admitted responsibility for the bomb attack, the worst against US interests in the Middle East since 241 US marines and sailors were killed in Beirut in 1983. In Saudi Arabia, in November, five Americans and two Indians were killed in a bomb attack on a US run military training centre in Riyadh. Four Saudi nationals were beheaded in Saudi Arabia last month for the Riyadh bombing.
A senior Arab diplomat said of the latest bombing: "The attack was very professionally executed. The method used was different, from the Riyadh car bomb but" the target is the same. It is too "early to speculate who did it."
President Ezer Weizman of Israel blamed Iran.
Riyadh offered a 10 million rivals ($2.67 million) reward for help in securing arrests. Road blocks were set up throughout, Saudi Arabia's eastern region.
The government said the culprits were influenced by Islamic groups outside the kingdom, including the dissident, Dr Mohammad al Masari, and the financier Mr Osama bin Ladin.
Dr Masari, who is waging a campaign against the Saudi royal family, has denied the charge from his exile in London.
Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf Arab states, has been mostly concerned with security threats from Iraq and Iran since Baghdad invaded Kuwait in 1990 and has increasingly looked to its key ally Washington for security assurances.
But home grown militancy has gained momentum since the Gulf War, when fundamentalists were incensed at the influx of half a million mostly US soldiers on Islamic Saudi soil.
Power in Saudi Arabia has since it was established in 1932 rested in the hands of the al Saud rdyal family. The kingdom has remained a absolute monarchy without legislature or political parties. Islamic Sharia law prevails.
Outrage at the bombing came rapidly from France, Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Russia and across much of the Arab world. The British Prime Minister, Mr Major, called it "an act of pure evil".