Saudi security officials said the gunmen’s leader had been arrested, two killed – several escaped.There was confusion yesterday about the identity and the number of those killed. He said: “They didn’t have any demands, they just started killing people.” He said that the nine hostages who were killed were in addition to the 16. A man with a machine gun came upstairs and said to him in Arabic: “We only want to hurt Westerners and Americans. Can you tell us where we can find them here?”By now gunmen had killed at least 16, including Mr Hamilton, an American and an Italian cook.

The Saudi security forces stormed the Oasis compound, a walled complex, and surrounded the attackers on the sixth floor of a high-rise building. During the night they tried to rescue hostages but retreated when they found booby traps. At night the gunmen also started to kill hostages, who are by now said to have numbered 25.One of those who survived, a Jordanian computer engineer, Nijar Hijazin, said: “The nine had their throats cut by the kidnappers when they tried to escape at night by the stairs.”At no time did the hostage-takers ask to negotiate according to Jamal Khashoggi, a media adviser to the Saudi Arabian ambassador to London. To his relief they said, “we do not kill Muslims” and politely apologised for breaking into his home. They then lectured him on Islam and told him: “We are defending our country and we want to take it from the non-believers” – probably a reference to the royal family of Saudi Arabia.Another Muslim resident, Salam al-Hakawati, 38, a Lebanese corporate finance official, hid with his wife and two-year-old son upstairs when they heard gunfire.

He heard people searching rooms downstairs and saying “this is a Muslim house” when they saw Koranic verses. When he said he was they said: “Give us proof.” Abu Hashem knew they could not be regular security guards and took out his identity papers which showed he was a Muslim but also revealed that he was an American of Iraqi origins.When the gunmen said he was an American, Abu Hashem said this was true but he was an American Muslim. Abu Hashem noticed that there were blood stains on the floor of his house and went looking for security guards. Instead he found four Saudi men with short beards and whose ages he said were between 18 and 25 A revealing conversation followed.