Saudis: 3 militants killed in gunfight
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 Saudi officials prevented what would have been a much larger attack.
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(CNN) -- Saudi Arabian state television reported Thursday that three militants thought to be on the country's most-wanted list were killed in a fierce gunfight in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah.
Saudi television reported that security forces in Jeddah killed three "terrorists," wounded one, and arrested one more. One Saudi policeman was wounded in the battle, it said.
The gunfight erupted in a commercial district and progressed to a residential area where police said they cornered some of the gunmen.
The Saudi security forces surrounded the militants in a building under construction in the al-Safa neighborhood, in northeastern Jeddah.
The incident came a day after a car bomb targeting a security forces building in the capital Riyadh killed at least five people and wounded 147 others.
A group that says it is sympathetic to the aims of the al Qaeda terrorist network claimed responsibility for the attack.
The group, called The Brigade of the Two Holy Shrines, has claimed responsibility for two other attacks in Saudi Arabia, both of them assassinations of security forces. (Full story)
The claim for the bombing was posted Thursday on a Geocities Web site and on a number of Islamist Web sites, according to Paul Eedle, a specialist on al Qaeda's use of the Internet.
A senior Saudi official said the government believes al Qaeda terrorists were behind the bombing, which heavily damaged the old Saudi General Security building housing offices of the Interior Ministry.
The official noted that authorities had recently defused five other bombs and that simultaneous bombings are an al Qaeda trademark.
Wednesday's bombing marked the third terror attack in the kingdom in less than a year.
After the attack, the Saudi ambassador to the United States said his nation was now engaged in "total war" against terrorists.
"This shows that this group is evil, and they consider everybody their enemy," Prince Bandar bin Sultan said. (Full story)
"We are going to fight them hard. ... It's a total war with them now. And there will be no compromises, and we're not going to give up on them."
Saudi authorities have been battling domestic Islamic militants since May 2003, when triple suicide bombings at residential compounds housing Westerners in Riyadh killed 23 people.
In November, a car bombing struck a mostly Arab neighborhood near Riyadh's diplomatic quarter, killing at least 17 people.
Seven Saudi police officers and three militants -- including a man U.S. officials called a senior al Qaeda leader -- have died in gunbattles since March.
On Tuesday, security forces reported they had defused five truck bombs found in and around Riyadh in the past week. Police had set up several checkpoints in Riyadh during the search.
CNN's Caroline Faraj in Dubai contributed to this report.
