Briton killed, 16 hurt in Qatar theatre car bomb

A Briton was killed and a dozen were injured when a car bomb exploded outside a Qatar theatre during a the performance of a play, the Interior Ministry said.

Al-Arabiya satellite news network, quoting Qatari sources, reported that two people had been killed and 16 injured in the blast last night at the Doha Players Theatre in a northern suburb of the capital.

A British school is located in the vicinity of the theatre. The US Embassy is six miles from the scene, and a US military base is almost 12 miles away.

The British Foreign Office confirmed a British national had been killed. It did not identify the victim. It said it was “urgently” trying to determine the nationalities of the injured, some of whom were seriously hurt.

The Qatari Interior Ministry said 12 people were injured in the explosion, and 10 of those had already been treated and released from the hospital.

The ministry said investigations were under way. It gave no other details.

Such violence is rare in Qatar, a small, quiet country with tight security.

Al-Jazeera Arab television quoted the Interior Ministry as saying that the car used in the explosion was owned by an Egyptian who left his home in the morning and had not returned.

“I saw people lying on the ground. I think they were in shock because of the explosion. They were mostly foreigners,” said Ahmed Goudah, a witness who spoke from the scene.

Goudah said dozens of cars were smashed with shattered windows. Some were engulfed in flames. Firefighters and emergency vehicles converged on the area, which was sealed off by police.

Earlier, Gen. Ahmed Al-Hariki of the Interior Ministry told Al-Jazeera that the blast occurred at a restaurant inside the theatre.

US Army Captain Eric Clark, who is based in Qatar, said he spoke with a woman who was performing in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night when a blast shook the hall at about 9:15pm (1815 GMT).

“She heard a massive explosion and there was mass chaos and people just exited the building,” Clark said by telephone. He said there were about 100 people in the audience.

The theatre is a popular venue for non-Qataris from Western and Arab countries and is located in Farek Kelab, a northern suburb of the capital.

Al-Jazeera showed a wooden building in flames and heavy smoke. Ambulances waited outside and dozens of bystanders gathered.

The last incident of this type was the February 2004 car bomb assassination of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a rebel leader and former Chechen president who lived in Qatar for several years.

A Qatari court later convicted two Russian intelligence officers of the murder and sentenced them to 25 years in prison

Energy-rich Qatar is a close ally of the US in the Gulf. The country is home to the US Central Command’s forward operations in the Middle East.