How an OFW survived
the Alkhobar attacks

LAST Saturday, May 29, started like any other day for Camilo Tinaco, the 34-year-old receptionist from Dipolog City in Mindanao who had been working for four years at the Oasis Tower Hotel in Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia.

A father of three children, Camilo was looking forward to his annual vacation that he was due to take on July 1. With only a month to go before he could leave, Camilo had to continue to take care of his guests. That fateful day there were 26 guests spread across the six floors of the small hotel in the Oasis housing compound.

The bloody attack on the compound started at 7:30 a.m., when a group of four Saudi terrorists shot their way in, killing the security guards at the entrance. Although the compound had been given a five-star security rating, its concrete blocks and armed guards failed to foil the attack. Moving from house to house, the terrorists asked to see people's residence papers to determine their religion: Green ones are for Muslims, brown ones for non-Muslims. The non-Muslims were taken hostage. At the end of the 25-hour siege of the Oasis compound, 22 people would be dead, including nine foreign hostages at the hotel who had their throats slit after trying to escape.

When Camilo heard that shooting had taken place at the compound entrance, he immediately told all guests to lock themselves in their rooms and await further instructions. He took the master key and the list of guests with him and initially went to Room 112, he told me in a phone interview. After five minutes he decided to move higher and went to Room 512, finally settling in Room 405, where he would stay for the duration of the siege.

Although the rooms on the fourth floor were under renovation, which meant there were no televisions in the rooms, Camilo's choice of room would later turn out to be a fortuitous one. Two other colleagues initially joined him in the room: the Canadian food and beverage manager, and an Indian colleague, Joe Fernandes. Both soon left Camilo alone in Room 405. Fernandes joined a group of Indian colleagues who had taken refuge in another room. Later, Camilo found out that Fernandes was one of the nine hotel staff murdered by the terrorists. If only Fernandes had stayed with Camilo, he might still be alive today.

The terrorists soon began searching the hotel, looking for the guests and staff, trying to round them all up. Camilo told me that the terrorists banged on his door many times while shouting in Arabic and broken English for him to come out. He didn't, and the terrorists couldn't open the door because Camilo had pushed the bed up against the door.

Frightened and shocked, Camilo decided to call the Philippine embassy in Riyadh on his cellular phone. He managed to get through to Ambassador Bahnarim Guinomla, and was in constant contact with him until nine o'clock that night, when his battery ran out. The ambassador immediately informed the Saudi authorities that Camilo was in Room 405, even as he traveled to Alkhobar himself to monitor the situation.

With no TV to keep him informed, Camilo could do nothing but pray and wait to be rescued. The intermittent gunfire, and a loud explosion the following morning, meant that he couldn't sleep even for a minute.

"I stayed in the room, drinking water from the faucet in the bathroom," Camilo recounted. "Once I looked through my door's magic eye to see who was in the hallway. That's when I saw one of the terrorists, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, walking down the hallway. He was very thin, only around 5-feet-4, and looked like he was 21-23 years old. He was carrying a sophisticated weapon and a hand grenade."

His first impulse upon seeing the Saudi man walking down the hallway was that he had been rescued, but then he realized the man wasn't wearing a military uniform. He didn't open the door.

Camilo and the others were not rescued until 8:30 the following morning. Saudi government commandoes jumped down to the roof of the hotel from a hovering helicopter, rushing down to bring out the hostages. By then, three of the four terrorists had escaped, leaving behind the fourth terrorist who had been wounded. It took until 11:30 a.m. for Camilo to be fully debriefed by the security forces.

Later that day, Camilo met Ambassador Guinomla and had dinner with him. Other Filipinos had also been held hostage on the compound, but Camilo was the sole Filipino inside the hotel.

Now staying with friends in Alkhobar, Camilo told me he was waiting for his end of service benefits from Saad Corp., the owner of the compound and of the hotel, before returning to the Philippines as soon as possible. He has no plans to come back to Saudi Arabia. Who can blame him after surviving such an ordeal?

I don't think the whole ordeal has sunk in yet for Camilo, who laughed nervously when I talked to him. He told me that he hadn't talked yet with his children on the phone, as it was difficult to get into contact with them. I then apologized to him for what he had to endure.

It is so sad that some Saudis have been so badly brainwashed that they believe killing foreigners helps the cause of Islam. This is not Islam and never will be. Foreigners are here in the Kingdom because we have invited them here to help develop and run the country. Without these foreigners, the country would not function and it would be a poorer place.

Smashing al-Qaida cells is not enough. The whole of Saudi society has to wake up to the menace posed by these fanatics. It is a battle for our religion, and we cannot allow the extremists to hijack the ideals of a peaceful religion and turn it into one of hatred and violence. This battle will take years to finish, but there is no other option. Sitting back and sticking our heads into the sand is the worst thing we can do. The devil is here, and he's knocking hard on our door.

Comments or questions? E-mail me at rasheed@arabnews.com.