- RIYADH (AFP) -- Unknown gunmen
killed an American in the Saudi capital, a US embassy spokesman told AFP,
as police launched an investigation into the latest murder to shake the
Islamic kingdom.
-
- "The person who was killed was an American,"
said the spokesman, who said next of kin would be notified before the man's
identity was released.
-
- Riyadh's police chief confirmed that an American had
been killed in a shooting incident in the east of the capital and that
an inquiry had begun.
-
- Alerted around 2:30 pm (1130 GMT) to "shooting in
a house in the east of Riyadh", security forces went to the scene
where "they saw that the house was inhabited by an American national,
who was killed in the incident", the police chief told the official
SPA news agency.
-
- The victim's American colleague and neighbour, who lives
on the top floor of the same villa, told AFP that he had heard a shooting
and went downstairs to investigate, only to find the man dead.
-
- The neighbour said the family of the dead man, who worked
for the Vinnell Corporation whose activities include military training,
was not living with him in the kingdom.
-
- A witness in the area told AFP that the American was
followed from a nearby clinic to his home by two or three gunmen, who shot
him inside his house before fleeing the scene.
-
- A resident of the neighbourhood had earlier told AFP
the American was gunned down leaving a medical centre. "A Westerner
was the target of a shooting as he left a clinic" in the district,
the resident said.
-
- Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television also reported that
the man was killed as he left a clinic on Electricity Street in eastern
Riyadh's Gulf district.
-
- The killing came two days after suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen
shot dead an Irish cameraman and gravely wounded a BBC correspondent in
Riyadh as they were filming near the home of a former wanted militant who
was himself shot dead by security forces in the same area last December.
-
- Four gunmen killed 22 people including Westerners in
a rampage and hostage-taking drama in the eastern oil city of Al-Khobar
on May 29 and 30.
-
- An alleged Al-Qaeda statement after the Al-Khobar killings
vowed to "cleanse" the Arabian Peninsula of "infidels".
-
- On May 22, a German national was shot dead in Riyadh.
His killing followed a shooting spree on May 1 by gunmen who killed two
Americans, two Britons, an Australian and a Canadian at a petrochemical
plant in the Red Sea industrial port of Yanbu.
-
- On June 1, an American serviceman was slightly wounded
when shots were fired at vehicles carrying US military personnel on a highway
outside Riyadh.
-
- Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network has been blamed
for repeated attacks on compounds housing Westerners and Arabs in Saudi
Arabia over the past year, during which time more than 85 people have been
killed.
-
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of Agence France Presse.
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