The official SPA news agency quoted ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki as saying the early morning shootout took place at a police checkpoint in Jizan province on the southern border with Yemen.

Turki told the agency that two of the three suspects, who had been on board a vehicle, were wearing women’s clothing and wore explosives vests and carried grenades.

“More grenades, automatic weapons and bomb-making materials” were also found in the vehicle, he added.

The shooting broke out when the vehicle was about to undergo a security check on the basis of “information on the planning of terrorist acts by the deviant minority,” official Saudi phraseology for Al-Qaeda.

The spokesman said that when a policewoman wanted to check the identities of two people in the vehicle dressed in women’s robes the suspects began shooting at security forces, who returned fire.

He said the hail of bullets resulted in “the deaths of two passengers in the vehicle and the arrest of a third.”

Turki said one police officer was killed and another wounded in the exchange of fire, and added that no further details would be given for the moment “so an inquiry can get under way.”

It was not immediately known if the policewoman was among the casualties.

On August 28 Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a member of the Saudi royal family responsible for the kingdom’s anti-terror fight, escaped a suicide bomb attack in Jeddah that was claimed by Al-Qaeda.

The deputy interior minister suffered only superficial injuries when a suicide bomber got close to him and detonated his explosives.

Prince Mohammed had been receiving guests at the end of the day’s fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, SPA said at the time.

The royal court said the bomber — the only person to be killed in the blast — was a wanted terrorist who had approached the prince under the pretext he wanted to give himself up.

That attack followed the arrest in Saudi Arabia earlier in August of 44 Al-Qaeda suspects, including one foreigner, and the discovery of arms caches used by the group.

Police found around 70 machine guns and ammunition, as well as 280 electronic detonation devices in Riyadh, and another 96 similar devices hidden in the desert in the Qassim region north of the capital, SPA said.

It said that some members of the group have received training to use arms and explosives both abroad and inside the kingdom, the birthplace of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.