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Briton Killed in Saudi Arabia Shooting

Associated Press

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - A Briton was killed and another injured Sunday in a shooting in the capital, the Riyadh police chief said, just hours after the Saudi foreign minister said the government was doing "everything we can" to protect citizens and foreign residents.

The police chief told the official Saudi Press Agency that gunmen opened fire on the two Britons in a Riyadh neighborhood about 5:45 p.m.

The shootings come less than a week after 22 people, most of them foreigners, were killed in a shooting rampage and hostage-taking in the eastern Saudi oil hub of Khobar. Saudi security forces captured one of the four attackers in the May 29 assault and are still looking for the other three.

Many view the attacks as an attempt by Islamic radicals to drive foreigners out of the kingdom, a move that could seriously hurt its oil industry. The attacks last week sent oil price to record highs.

The British Foreign Office has advised British nationals against all nonessential travel to Saudi Arabia. The United States has gone further, urging all of its citizens to leave the kingdom - a move criticized by Saudi officials.

Earlier Sunday, in Jiddah, Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal told a news conference that terror attacks in the kingdom will not force the government to give up the fight against "this oppressive group that is isolated legally (and) socially."

Saud's remarks were the first to reporters by a Saudi official since gunmen in Khobar attacked two office compounds and then took hostages at a hotel in the luxury Oasis housing compound.

About 50 people were at the hotel when the gunmen took it over. The gunmen killed at least nine hostages before they escaped in the early hours of May 30.

The militants' escape rattled Saudis and expatriates. Asking how the militants could slip away, many people have expressed a lack of faith in the ability of Saudi security forces to protect them.

Saud said the government is providing expatriates the same - and in some case - more protection than it is giving its citizens.

"I don't know what other assurances can be given," Saud said. The safety of the hostages in the Khobar siege, he said, was the first priority of the security forces on the scene, a strategy that was right even if it resulted in the escape of the hostage takers.

"It was the right priority for the security forces to give first priority to the hostages and not to attack prematurely and jeopardize their safety, their lives," he said.

"These criminals have no inhibition against taking lives," he added. "That this led to the escape of some of the terrorists is something that happened."

The official Interior Ministry account of the end of the standoff was that the three gunmen used hostages as human shields to escape Saudi commandos who had landed on the hotel. But some officials have said that the men were allowed to escape because they had threatened to kill all hostages - an account the government is sensitive about because its stated policy is not to negotiate with terrorists.

A U.S. official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Sunday, said he was not aware of any deals with the hostage takers to end the crisis.

The official also said American officials had played no part in Saudi decision-making on how to end the standoff and offered no advice to the Saudi security officials in charge of the operation, as some Saudi officials had said.

He said FBI personnel were sent to Khobar, a standard U.S. procedure to determine the cause of death of an American citizen. An American died in a shooting before the hostage taking.

The U.S. official said seven U.S. military personnel, in the kingdom on a training mission, were in the compound - but not in the hotel - during the standoff and that two of them were wounded. The official said the U.S. Embassy was in contact with Saudi security about the seven during the standoff.

Another U.S. official in Washington said the Saudis were told that some members of a long-standing U.S. military mission were in the compound. So the Saudis "modified" their strategy and did not immediately storm the building, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Saudi officials have linked militant violence in the kingdom to al-Qaida or to other groups believed inspired by bin Laden. Saudi-born al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden has vowed to destabilize the Saudi government, which the Saudi-born extremist views as insufficiently Islamic and which he derides for its close relationship with the United States.

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