Frenchman shot and killed in Saudi Arabia ‘terrorist attack’
“We can say through the preliminary investigation that it is a terrorist attack,” interior ministry spokesman Mansur al-Turki said.
Sources in the kingdom’s French community identified the victim as Laurent Barbot, employed with French defence electronics company Thales, which is working on a military project in Jeddah and the eastern industrial city of Jubail.
The incident was the latest in a series of shootings targeting Westerners but the first involving a French national in the kingdom, which has been battling a deadly wave of terror attacks since May 2003 blamed on al-Qaida sympathisers.
On September 15, a British national was killed in a shooting in Riyadh. He worked for telecommunications company Marconi, which advises the Saudi National Guard.
In August, Galway engineer Tony Higgins was shot dead by militants.
A statement issued last week by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi branch of Osama bin Laden’s terror network, claimed responsibility for his death.
“It is a message to the crusaders and their accomplices, the tyrants, that the mujahedeen are determined to crush the crusading forces, to free the land of Islam in order to establish the rule of God and cleanse the Arabian Peninsula of infidels,” said the statement.
The Saudis have been hunting supporters of al-Qaida, whose local leader, Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, was killed in mid-June shortly after his al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula group published pictures of the beheading of US engineer Paul Johnson, who was kidnapped on June 12 in Riyadh.
King Fahd offered a month-long amnesty in June for militants to surrender, but only six people came forward.
The authorities, who in December issued a 26-strong most-wanted list, have since repeatedly warned that militants who did not surrender would be pursued.
Eleven on the list remain at large.
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