“The president announced the support of the United States to the government and people of Saudi Arabia in their fight against terrorism,” the Saudi Press Agency said in a statement early yesterday morning.

The statement, released following a telephone conversation between Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah, added that Bush expressed his condolences over the deaths in the Riyadh blasts.

“President Bush also sympathized with the Kingdom and highlighted the strong relations between the two countries,” the statement said.

Prince Abdullah, on his part, thanked the US president for his support and conveyed his condolences on the deaths of Americans in the attacks.

“We’ll not show any leniency toward anyone who threatens the Kingdom’s security and stability,” the crown prince told the US leader.

The Interior Ministry said yesterday that five more people had died in the blasts, raising the death toll to 34. The five include a Filipino, a Briton, an Irish national and an Australian of Lebanese origin. The fifth body remained unidentified.

It gave the latest breakdown on the deaths as follows: Seven Saudis, seven Americans, three Filipinos, two Jordanians, one each from Australia, Britain, Ireland, Lebanon and Switzerland and one whose nationality had not been determined. In addition, the nine suicide bombers also died.

Many Saudis said innocent expatriates living in their country did not deserve this.

Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, said in a statement of condolence to victims’ families that the perpetrators had committed a “crime against humanity.”

The Council of Senior Islamic Scholars held a meeting in Riyadh yesterday and denounced the terror attacks, saying the terrorists have committed a “big crime.”

Mike Thomas, a 28-year-old tennis instructor from Wales who visited one of the targeted compounds yesterday to check on his students, said he was “very angry and very hurt. I can’t live here anymore.”

John Phinney, a 69-year-old American who has lived in Saudi Arabia for 25 years, said he would probably stay. Phinney, whose children live in Florida, works for Lockheed-Martin, training Saudi military personnel in aircraft maintenance.

“Lockheed has given us the option to leave, but the majority of us are going to stay,” Phinney said in a press statement. “You choose your way of life. I can stay or go back to Florida. I think I will continue on.”

Another American resident of one of the targeted compounds said the attackers succeeded in instilling fear. But the man, who gave only his first name, Bob, said he did not plan to leave.

“We want to promote United States business and trade, so we want to look out for the interests of the United States... and these attacks were obviously done to undermine those things,” said the 48-year-old Bob, from Joplin, Mo.

“It is perceived that we have done good business here in the past and that these guys (the Saudis) are under attack and certainly we are not going to just turn tail and abandon them,” he added.

Britain advised its citizens not to travel to Saudi Arabia unless absolutely necessary. In a statement, the Foreign Office said there remained a “high threat” of further strikes and warned of the possibility of chemical and biological attacks.

Assailants drove, guns blazing, into three guarded housing compounds for expatriates shortly before midnight and set off huge car bombs.

The bombers killed two Saudi soldiers and wounded two others at the main gate of one well-defended compound housing employees of US defense contractor Northrop Grumman Vinnell Corp subsidiary before blowing the front off a four-story building housing unaccompanied or bachelor employees.

About 2,000 civil defense workers searched for evidence of the attackers’ identities and methods yesterday.

Investigators wearing surgical gloves checked the rubble at the Al-Hamra compound in eastern Riyadh. A car bomb had left a crater 20 feet wide and 3 feet deep.

Officials and terror experts said the attacks bore all the hallmarks of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, the group blamed for the 2001 attacks on America.