Bastards!
A Briton was shot dead in the Saudi capital Riyadh, the latest in a spate of attacks on Western expatriates in the kingdom. An interior ministry spokesman quoted by official media described the victim as a British resident of Saudi Arabia, but did not give his name. He said the incident was under investigation.
Inspector Nayef was dozing when the call came. "Chief," called his trusted assistant, Mahmoud, "there's been a shooting down at the grocery store!"
"A shooting, y'say? Not one of those black fellows again, is it?"
"No, effendi! It was an infidel!"
"An infidel? Who'd he shoot?"
"No, no, effendi! Someone shot him!"
"I suppose we must investigate. Probably nothing to it, though. Get me my cape!" |
Witnesses said the victim was gunned down outside a supermarket on Khraiss road at around 5:00 pm (1400 GMT). They said two gunmen shot him with four bullets as he headed to his car in the supermarket's parking lot. The attackers, who were in a car, bravely sped away, the witnesses said. An AFP correspondent saw an ambulance taking away the victim as police questioned witnesses. The motives of the killing were not immediately known, but suspected Al-Qaeda extremists have been blamed for a string of attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia. The last fatal attack was on August 3, when an Irish engineer was shot dead in Riyadh. A US diplomatic car came under fire in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on August 30, but no one was hurt.
| So that one doesn't count? |
The Irishman's killing, later claimed by the Saudi branch of the Al-Qaeda terror network, shattered a lull in the attacks that followed the June 18 killing of the local Al-Qaeda commander. Saudi security forces shot dead Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, head of "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula", and three associates in Riyadh shortly after they publicized pictures of the beheading of American engineer Paul Johnson, who had been abducted in the capital. The targeting of Westerners began in early May, a year after the militants launched a wave of bombings in Riyadh. Some 90 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the violence. |