Saudi deadline up for militants
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 Saudi security forces target suspected militants.
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- A Saudi government program promising leniency for suspected militants if they turned themselves in expired at the end of Thursday, with more than 80 people having taken advantage of the offer.
Saudi sources told CNN that more than 20 suspected militants turned themselves in during the final 24 hours before the month-long program expired at midnight.
The sources said the deadline will not be extended, but the government will allow suspects who called a hotline before midnight to surrender later.
The program exempts terror suspects who surrendered from the death penalty in Saudi Arabia but not from civil suits by their victims' families.
As many as 30 of those who turned themselves in did so outside Saudi borders, the Interior Ministry said.
At least two of the more than 80 who took advantage of the program are said to be linked to al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
Crown Prince Abdullah has said that after the deadline, militants will face forceful consequences.
Earlier this week, Saudi security forces, police and national guard units staged a major operation against suspected al Qaeda militants in the capital, killing at least two and arresting the wife of the fifth-most-wanted man in the kingdom, the Saudi Interior Ministry said Tuesday.
Three other suspected militants were wounded, the ministry said.
The ministry would not confirm that among the dead and wounded may be Saleh al-Oufi, the current leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Oufi's wife was arrested in the operation and three of his children were detained, the ministry said. There were other women in the house and they also were detained, it said.
Al-Oufi, a former prison guard, is fifth on Saudi Arabia's list of most-wanted terrorists.
At the center of the cordon was what sources described as a major safehouse, which contained light weapons and homemade explosives.
Heavy exchanges of gunfire took place near the house, and al-Oufi's wife was arrested inside, the security sources said.
Head of slain hostage found
Inside a freezer in the villa, Saudi security forces found the head of slain U.S. hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr., a Saudi Interior Ministry official said. (Full story)
Johnson, 49, was kidnapped and beheaded in Saudi Arabia last month. He was working as an engineer for Lockheed Martin in the capital Riyadh when he was abducted by al Qaeda militants on June 12.
Shortly after photographs of Johnson's body were posted on an Internet site, Abdel Aziz Al-Muqrin, the self-proclaimed military leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, and three other terrorists were killed in a gunbattle with Saudi police, and 12 other suspected members of the cell were captured.
Shortly after al-Muqrin's death, al-Oufi was named the al Qaeda chief in Saudi.
Security forces and other units began encircling suspected militants in the King Fahd district in the northern part of the city late Tuesday.
Residents in the district told CNN the gunbattle began around 11:15 p.m. (4:15 p.m. ET) and was intense for several minutes.
Police carrying automatic weapons and wearing flak jackets blocked off all streets in one portion of the district, an area of about one square mile. That section is made up of residential neighborhoods and shopping areas.
More than 100 law enforcement vehicles -- including armored vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns and trailers carrying portable floodlights -- descended on the area along with five busloads of security force reinforcements.
Sources said that while forces surrounded the suspected safehouse, a group of suspects tried to break through the police cordon but were turned back.
Some security forces then pursued that group, which fled in a Jeep, firing their weapons.
There is speculation that the operation was undertaken based on information gathered from the interrogation of people who have taken advantage of the government's offer of leniency for wanted militants.
Othman Al-Omari, number 19 on Saudi Arabia's most wanted list of 26, accepted the offer of limited amnesty, according to Saudi sources. He turned himself in June 27.
He was a business partner of Shaban Al Shihri -- the first al Qaeda member to accept the offer when he turned himself in June 25.
Al Qaeda is blamed for a wave of terror attacks stretching for more than a year.
Al Qaeda attacks during the weekend of May 29 in the Saudi oil city of Khobar left at least 22 people dead -- 19 of them from other countries.
A car bombing last November believed to be the work of al Qaeda struck a mostly Arab neighborhood near Riyadh's diplomatic quarter, killing at least 17 people and wounding 122 others.
In May of 2003, triple al Qaeda car bombings in Riyadh killed 23 people, plus the 12 bombers, at three complexes housing Westerners.
-- CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson and Senior Producer Henry Schuster in Riyadh, CNNArabic.com Editor Caroline Faraj in Dubai and Arab Affairs Editor Octavia Nasr in Atlanta contributed to this report
