Updated

A look at violence blamed on extremist militants in Saudi Arabia since attacks on housing compounds in May 2003 prompted a crackdown by authorities.

Dec. 6 — Islamic militants attack the U.S. consulate in Jiddah and hold civilians at gunpoint. Eight people are killed, including three attackers.

Nov. 16 — Saudi police arrest five suspected militants following a shootout that kills a Saudi policeman. Police seize automatic rifles, pipe bombs and more than $10,000.

July 20 — Saudi security forces kill two militants and wound three others in a raid. The head of American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr. 49, is found in a freezer in the Al Qaeda hideout.

June 18 — An Al Qaeda group says it decapitated Johnson, and posts three photos on the Internet showing his body and severed head. Saudi officials shoot and kill Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, the top Al Qaeda figure in Saudi Arabia.

May 29 — Gunmen fire on oil company compounds in Khobar, 250 miles northeast of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and take hostages inside a residential compound. The Interior Ministry says 22 people, 19 of them foreigners, are killed. Al-Moqrin claims responsibility.

May 20 — Saudi security forces clash with five suspected Islamic militants outside Buraydah. Four suspects are reported killed.

May 1 — Attackers storm the offices of Houston-based ABB Lumps Global Inc. in Yanbu, 220 miles north of Jiddah, killing six Westerners and a Saudi. All four attackers die in a shootout after a police chase in which they dragged the body of an American from the bumper of their car. Saudi officials say the attack may be linked to Al Qaeda, but blame a wanted man with links to a London-based Saudi opposition group.

April 21 — Five people, including two senior police officers and an 11-year-old girl, are killed along with the suicide bomber in an attack on a government building in Riyadh. An Islamic extremist group, the al-Haramin Brigades, claims responsibility.

Jan. 29 — Five Saudi security agents are among six people killed in a shootout that erupts as agents search a suspected terrorist hideout in Riyadh.

Nov. 8, 2003 — A suicide bombing at a Riyadh housing compound kills 17 people, most of them Muslims working in Saudi Arabia. U.S. and Saudi officials believe the mastermind is Al-Moqrin.

Nov. 3, 2003 — Police clash with suspected Al Qaeda sympathizers in the holy city of Mecca, killing two militants and uncovering a cache of weapons.

Sept. 23, 2003 — Security forces in the southern town of Jizan storm an apartment building where terror suspects have barricaded themselves. The three-story building also housed employees, many of them foreigners, of a nearby government hospital. The raid ends with the deaths of three suspects, including an alleged Al Qaeda operative wanted by the FBI, and one security agent.

July 28, 2003 — Saudi police raid a farm where militants had holed up in al-Qassim, 220 miles northwest of Riyadh, touching off a battle with firearms and grenades that kills six suspects and two officers.

June 14, 2003 — A raid on a bomb-filled, booby-trapped apartment in Mecca leaves five suspected Islamic militants and two security agents dead.

May 12, 2003 — Car bomb attacks on three Riyadh compounds housing foreigners kill 35 people, including nine suicide bombers.