CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Al Qaeda says it's a Saudi setup. Listen to this: The terrorists say they didn't kill children in the Riyadh suicide blast, and they are not targeting Arabs. Live to Riyadh now and Nic Robertson. Good morning -- Nic.</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. This latest al Qaeda claim of responsibility, coming on a Web site usually reliable, saying that the people in the compound must have been affiliated with Americans, because there were so many security forces on the gate. They say that they killed -- al Qaeda says they killed 87 people, 30 of them security forces. They deny, as they said, that children were among the fatalities and calls on Saudi Arabia to prove it. Certainly when we have been talking to survivors of the blast, they recount at least several children who have been -- or were killed. And the number, of course, that al Qaeda is quoting here is vastly different from the 17 dead that the Saudi authorities are talking about. Also, al Qaeda is claiming that Saudi authorities are manipulating the media. What seems to be happening here, al Qaeda is very sensitive to the issue that Muslims were killed. These images have dominated this region in the last few days, and this appears to be an effort to essentially say that these Muslims, if they were Muslims that were killed, were affiliated with Americans in some way. This does correlate quite accurately with what Saudi authorities were saying that they were getting through interrogation of al Qaeda operatives here that the al Qaeda operatives had thought that the compound was occupied, used by Americans. And analysts say this indicates an intelligence breakdown, bad judgment, bad intelligence of al Qaeda at this time -- Carol.</s>COSTELLO: Nic Robertson reporting live from Riyadh this morning. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Al Qaeda Claims It Carried Out Saudi Bombing