Blasts rock Saudi capital
Two militants killed, several people wounded
(CNN) -- Two explosions rocked the Saudi Arabian capital Wednesday night, killing two militants and wounding several people, according to the Ministry of Information.
The Al-Arabiya television network said seven militants were killed in the blasts but provided no details.
At 8:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. ET), a car was fired on as it attempted to drive through a security checkpoint outside the Interior Ministry, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information said.
The car was forced down a road leading to a tunnel and blew up, wounding several people, the spokesman said.
The explosion occurred between the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Interior, spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Turki told CNN.
A source who said he was in the municipality building near the Interior Ministry said automatic gunfire preceded the explosion.
A person on the ninth floor of the municipality building was slightly wounded by flying debris, the source said.
About three minutes later, a second car bomb detonated about 6 miles (10 kilometers) away, east of the capital, Turki told CNN.
It was not clear whether anyone was hurt in the second blast, which occurred near where the kingdom's counterterrorism forces are stationed, he said.
Turki said he had no information on fatalities or the number of injuries, nor did he know whether anyone was in the cars when they exploded.
Local media reported a third blast more than an hour later in the Jazirah district of Riyadh.
Turki denied there was a third blast.
Authorities in Saudi Arabia have been battling terrorist activities in recent years, many linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, which opposes the presence of the U.S. military in the oil-rich nation and the ruling Saudi royal family.
Earlier this month, a Saudi group linked to al Qaeda claimed responsibility for an attack on the U.S. Consulate in the Saudi city of Jeddah in which at least five employees and four attackers were killed.
In 2003, two al Qaeda suicide attacks on Riyadh housing compounds killed 40 people.
Reporter Essam Al-Ghalib in Jeddah and CNN.com Arabic's Caroline Faraj in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
