BBC considers armed guards after drive-by killing of Irish cameraman in Saudi Arabia

THE family of an Irish journalist shot dead in a drive-by shooting in Saudi Arabia on Sunday were waiting last night to find out when the body will come home as security forces launched an investigation into the killing.

Simon Cumbers’s family believe they will not hear any definite news until the end of the week but have been in touch with his wife Louise Bevan, who has travelled to the Gulf state.

Mr Cumbers, a 36-year-old journalist and cameraman, died at the scene of an ambush in the centre of the Saudi capital Riyadh on Sunday. He was working on an assignment for the BBC with colleague Frank Gardner, the corporation’s security correspondent, who was critically injured.

The BBC said yesterday it may employ armed guards to protect its staff if the situation is deemed dangerous enough. But a spokeswoman stressed the decision was not in response to the latest incident.

Mr Cumbers’s parents, Bronagh and Bob, an accountant with Albert Reynolds’s C&D Foods, were in the US when their other son Stephen broke the news in a call on Sunday evening. Mr Cumbers is also survived by two sisters, Catriona and Eimear.

The family said they were devastated at the death of Simon and asked to be given time to grieve properly.

The family is numbed by the death, Fr Derek D’Arby, the curate at St Mary’s parish in Navan said. They are unsure whether Mr Cumbers will be buried here or in England, where he lived for over a decade.

Saudi forces are hunting the gunmen who killed the freelance cameraman.

Mr Gardner, aged 42, an expert on al-Qaida, needed surgery after the attack in the district of Suweidi, a militant stronghold.

The BBC said the pair were filming a report about increasing fear among workers in Saudi Arabia following the massacre of 22 people in the oil city of Khobar last week.

The search for the culprits and the probe into the death of Mr Cumbers comes as a statement bearing al-Qaida’s imprint was released on an Islamist website warning Western airlines will now be the terror group’s priority target in the Saudi area.

British ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles, said the shooting underlined the terrorist threat in the country: “There is a serious and chronic terrorist threat.”