Mr. YAROSLAV TROFIMOV (Reporter, Wall Street Journal): “about 100,000 people appeared in the Grand Mosque of Mecca for the dawn prayer. What they didn’t know was that all of them would become hostages within minutes of the prayer beginning. A group of jihadis, several hundred jihadis, from Saudi Arabia, from Egypt, but also some Americans and Canadians - converts to Islam - had entered the mosque with weapons, overpowered the guards, shut down the gates and proclaimed the arrival of the savior, the Mahdi, that would cleanse the Muslim world from its impurities brought in by the Westerners.” —————————NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112051155
That’s one version... this is the Pakistani version which omits the French and substitutes Pakis:
http://muslimglory.blogspot.com/2011/08/1979-pakistani-special-forces-ssg.html