Posted on 05/22/2004 11:24:41 AM PDT by areafiftyone
RIYADH, May 22 (Reuters) - A German man was shot dead in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Saturday and authorities said they were checking if it was a Muslim militant attack.
"He was a German," an Interior Ministry official told Reuters.
"We are not sure if this is a terrorist attack or only a personal crime," the official said, adding that the German worked for a Saudi catering company.
Western diplomats could not immediately confirm whether the killing was carried out by Muslim militants loyal to Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who has vowed to drive out Western "infidels" from the kingdom.
If true it would be the second militant attack against Westerners in less than a month in the world's leading oil exporter and birthplace of Islam.
A Western expatriate quoted a witness as saying the man was shot dead when he left a supermarket in Riyadh at 6:15 pm (1515 GMT).
"A car pulled up. They shot him in the head and body and escaped," the expatriate said.
Earlier this month, militants killed five foreigners in an unprecedented attack on a petrochemical site on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea town of Yanbu.
A statement posted on an Islamist Web site in the name of Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, the top al Qaeda leader in Saudi Arabia, claimed that one of the group's cells had carried out the Yanbu shooting which killed two Americans, two Britons and an Australian.
Saudi militant followers of bin Laden's al Qaeda network also claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in April that targeted a security forces' headquarters in Riyadh.
The Gulf Arab state, a regional U.S. ally, has been battling a tide of Muslim militancy linked to al Qaeda, believed to be behind the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
A string of al Qaeda-linked suicide bombings in Riyadh last year killed 50 people, including nine Americans.
Last month, the United States embassy -- in a warning issued before the Riyadh bombing and the Yanbu shootings -- strongly urged its citizens to leave Saudi Arabia.
One possible motive-He wasn't a moon worshipping heathen.
Was he a white Kraut? If the answer is 'yes', then there's your motive.
Duh, uh, he was blond and blue eyed.
Poor German, if only he had a bright light, the cockroaches would have scattered in terror.
It's just another case for the A-rabs trying to become the new "Master Race".
The motive is "unclear" when an Islamofascist rabid dog kills someone he mistook for an American, but we know all the motives of every evil American guard at Abu Ghraib.
Selectvie clairvoyance at its finest.
What will the Peacenik krauts say about this? They'll probably apologize for allowing one of their capitalist pigs to defile the holyland by being there.
No, don't you know that somehow it will be President Bush's fault for bringing the rath of Islam down on all Aryans?
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