Armed guards and high walls around fortified compounds gave scant protection to expatriates living in the Saudi capital Riyadh when suicide bombers shot their way into three complexes to set off huge car bombs.
At least 29 people, including 10 Americans, died overnight, hours before the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, flew in yesterday. He blamed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group for the synchronised suicide assaults.
The attackers appeared to have driven through the gates of the three housing compounds, guns blazing, and charged past armed guards in a hail of automatic fire before detonating massive charges aboard their vehicles.
Police and soldiers milled about mangled cars and destroyed buildings, collecting evidence from debris and surveying the extensive damage.
Helen, an Australian, told CNN trucks rammed into gates at her walled compound, and exploded after an exchange of gunfire.
In one compound the entire facade had been ripped off an apartment block. A clock stood still at 32 minutes to midnight.
"I woke up from a big bang and I found my husband lying on the floor beside me. The windows were all gone," one unidentified South African woman told Al Arabiya television.
Her husband spoke to the channel as a stream of blood trickled down his leg. "What can I tell you? Lots happened, and it happened so quickly . . . Basically everything's destroyed."
Charred vehicles, their frames twisted and still smouldering, littered the compounds, made up of villas and four-storey apartment blocks.
Many balconies were blown off, their truncated steel girders jutting into the night sky. The bombs also gouged massive holes in many walls and felled roofs, destroying water storage tanks.
Rubble, tyres and the shattered limbs of trees filled a swimming pool at one compound, while the collapsed concrete and metal gate of another hung limply above the remains of a car.
At the third blast site - a group of low-rise blocks surrounded by piles of debris - the explosion caused a large crater in the pavement in front of the buildings.
"We were sleeping when we were woken up by the sound of gunfire," Nick, a European, told the Arab News newspaper. "Moments later, a loud explosion was heard, followed by another bigger explosion."
A US official said one of the compounds housed employees of Vinnell Corp, a US defence contractor which trains the Saudi National Guard. The others - al Hamra and al Jadwal complexes - housed Saudis and Arab, US and other foreigners.
Witnesses and the Saudi Interior Minister said the attacks were in the Riyadh districts of Gharnata, Ishbilya and Cordoba. - (Reuters)