THE leader of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia was killed in a gun battle with police in the holy city of Medina hours before a visit by King Abdullah, the newly installed monarch.

Saleh al-Awfi, who once stored the decapitated head of an American hostage in his family fridge, was one of the most wanted men in Saudi Arabia. His death, confirmed in a statement by the Saudi Interior Ministry read on state television, means that only one terrorist from a list of twenty-six most-wanted men issued by the authorities in December, 2003, is still at large. The rest have been killed or captured.

Al-Awfi, a former used-car dealer and prison guard, was in hiding in a residential area near the venerated Mosque of the Prophet, the site of the tomb of Muhammad, which King Abdullah visited for prayers.

He was one of two members of the “deviant group” — official terminology for al-Qaeda — killed when security forces returned fire as they tracked the terrorists in Medina, the ministry said.

Security forces also killed two other militants and arrested at least ten others in raids in the capital, Riyadh, and in Medina, the statement added.

In a letter posted on the internet this year, al-Awfi vowed to send a steady stream of fighters into Iraq to join insurgents fighting US forces there.

There were reports in April that he had died in a gunfight along with a dozen other al-Qaeda militants. Among those confirmed dead at the time was Abdulkarim al-Mejjati, a Moroccan terrorist who, it is believed, had links to some of those involved in last month’s London bombings.

Al-Awfi’s death would be a further blow to militants loyal to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of al-Qaeda. Their network in the kingdom has been weakened by a determined security crackdown by the authorities in the past two years.

Analysts believe that the accession of King Abdullah — a pious figure popular with his conservative Muslim subjects, who assumed the throne after King Fahd, his half-brother, died this month — could increase public support for the battle against al-Qaeda.

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