RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Employees at the Saudi Binladin Group, a construction giant, have set fire to more than seven company buses in the latest protest by disgruntled staff over not being paid salaries for months and a large round of reported layoffs.
Maj. Nayef al-Sharif, the spokesman for the Civil Defense in the city of Mecca, said late Saturday that firefighters put out the blaze without any injuries reported.
The Binladin Group has not issued any statements about the reported layoffs or the unrest. Calls and an email request for comment to the company were not immediately returned.
For several weeks, thousands of the firm's employees have been staging rare protests in Mecca and the Red Sea coastal city of Jiddah, with some saying they have not been paid for six months.
The attack on the company's buses comes a day after the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying the company has terminated employment for 50,000 foreign workers and issued them exit visas. Many of those workers are apparently refusing to leave without being paid their late wages, the newspaper reported.
Gulf-based construction firms have been among the hardest-hit due to lower oil prices that have curbed and sometimes delayed government spending on major infrastructure projects.
The Saudi Binladin Group is one of the world's largest construction firms. Founded in 1931 and headquartered in Jiddah, the firm has been behind some of Saudi Arabia's most important projects, including roads, tunnels, airports, universities and hotels. It has carried out expansion work throughout the holy city of Mecca to accommodate more Muslim pilgrims, including construction of a massive clock tower with luxury hotels.
The Binladin family has been close to Saudi Arabia's ruling family for decades. Al-Qaida's late leader Osama bin Laden was a renegade son of the construction firm's founder, Mohammed bin Laden, and was disowned by the family in the 1990s.
Despite the close family ties, the Saudi government barred the firm from acquiring new contracts after an initial government probe found the construction company was partly responsible for a crane collapse in Mecca's Grand Mosque last year that killed 111 people days before the start of the annual hajj pilgrimage.
The crane boom pierced the roof of the mosque housing Islam's holiest site, the Kaaba, bringing down slabs of reinforced concrete and leaving bodies of worshippers lying amid pools of blood on the mosque floors.
Saudi daily Arab News reported that the layoffs included engineers, foremen, steel fixers, carpenters and welders at the firm. The paper said employees were offered severance pay.
The newspaper cited various possible reasons for the terminations, including government restrictions on the firm and changes to Saudi labor law that have made it more difficult for firms to hire expatriates over local Saudis.
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Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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The spelling of Binladin in the story's keyword has been corrected to match the company's spelling.