Saudi police are seeking two young men in the killing of a Briton in a Riyadh parking lot, the Interior Ministry said Thursday, and the British ambassador called it a terrorist attack. Edward Stuart Muirhead-Smith, 55, was killed at the Max shopping center in eastern Riyadh on Wednesday, British Embassy spokesman Salah Taha told The Associated Press. Muirhead-Smith worked for the British telecommunications corporation Marconi as a training manager, according to a company spokesman. The two assailants were younger than 30 and "wore traditional Saudi robes," said Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Mansour al-Turki.
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One of them shot Muirhead-Smith in his car and they bravely fled in their own car, which police are trying to trace, al-Turki said. Saudi media reported he was shot four times. The ministry has not said the killing was an act of terrorism, and al-Turki said the investigation was continuing.
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But British Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles, condemned the killing as a terrorist attack. He said Muirhead-Smith's family and friends "should know — as the terrorists must know — that his murder will only make the British government more determined to stand with the Saudi government and people in the struggle against senseless terror of this kind." |