Khobar, Saudi Arabia ? Saudi authorities hunted Monday for three suspected al-Qaida militants who used hostages as human shields to escape after a weekend assault on a residential complex that killed 22 people, mostly foreign oil industry workers.

The attackers fled Khobar to nearby Dammam, where they abandoned their truck for a car commandeered at gunpoint from an unidentified driver and drove off with police in pursuit, a police official said Monday.

A fourth militant — described as the ringleader — was captured Sunday after helicopter-borne Saudi commandos raided the upscale Oasis compound, where the gunmen had taken dozens of foreigners hostage a day earlier in a hotel.

On Monday, bloodstains, glass shards, bullet holes and evidence of grenade blasts scarred the sealed-off Oasis resort complex, according to an employee. Broken windows were visible in the hotel’s upper floors.

The official death toll from the entire 25-hour siege was eight Indians, three Filipinos, three Saudis, two Sri Lankans, an American, a Briton, an Italian, a Swede, a South African and a 10-year-old Egyptian. Twenty-five people of various nationalities were injured, and security forces evacuated 242 people from the Oasis, including residents not held hostage but trapped inside.

One of the militants also was wounded in the worst terror attack on Saudi soil in a year and the second this month to target its oil industry.

Saudi authorities haven’t provided many details on how the standoff ended. Saudi security stormed the building early Sunday after they found out that the hostages were being harmed, said Jamal Khashoggi, an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s embassy in London.

An Interior Ministry statement said the three who escaped used hostages as human shields until they were able to commandeer a vehicle and flee, leaving the captives behind.

A statement Sunday attributed to al-Qaida’s chief in the Saudi region, Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, said the violence aimed to punish the kingdom for its oil dealings with the United States and to drive “crusaders” from “the land of Islam.”

The attack in the kingdom’s oil industry hub was expected to have some effect on world oil markets, where prices have been at new highs.