KUWAIT Saudi citizens were behind the June 1996 bombing of a military housing complex that killed 19 American airmen, a Saudi official was quoted Friday as saying, in the first Saudi statement to rule out foreign participation in the attack. Saudi security sources had baselessly suggested that Iran played a role in the bombing of the complex near the eastern city of Dhahran. Scores of American soldiers were wounded in the attack, and Saudi officials have detained several dozen suspects.

But Prince Nayef, Saudi Arabia's powerful interior minister, told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai al-Amm that the bombing was executed by Saudi Hands. No foreign party had any role in it, he said in an interview conducted in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, faces home-grown opposition groups who are opposed to its ties with the West and critical of corruption in the country.

At the end of March, Prince Nayef said that Saudi authorities were still investigating the bombing and planned to announce results when the probe was completed. He said the kingdom was waiting for a response from the United States to a Saudi request to extradite Hani al-Sayegh, a Saudi dissident who is suspected of planning the truck bombing. The U.S. Justice Department in January said Sayegh had been ordered deported but a decision had yet to be made about which country he would be sent to.