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Letter Bomb Wounds U.S. Doctor In Saudi
RIYADH, May 2 (News Agencies) - A letter bomb blew up in the face of an American doctor working in the eastern Saudi town of Khobar on Wednesday, in the latest in a series of blasts in the Gulf Arab state, the official SPA news agency reported.
The device exploded as he opened the envelope, wounding his face, hands and left knee, said the eastern province's police chief, quoted by SPA.
The doctor was in the private Saad hospital when he opened the envelope in his physiotherapy clinic at 8:30 am (0530 GMT), believing he had received a videotape.
A U.S. embassy spokesman in Riyadh confirmed the attack, saying an official from the U.S. consulate in Dammam, close to Khobar, had visited the man in hospital.
The spokesman refused to identify the man or give any further details, while the police chief said only that an investigation had been opened.
However, hospital sources gave the doctor's name as Gary Hatch, of subcontinental Indian origin, aged about 40. Hatch, a bachelor, had been working at the Saad hospital for the past six years.
Two Asian men delivered the envelope to a nurse who passed it on to the doctor, the sources said. Police were searching for the two Asians, who were not hospital employees.
Khobar was the scene of an anti-U.S. blast in 1996 when a lorry charged with explosives blew up outside U.S. barracks killing 19 members of the U.S. air force. That attack, in which almost 500 people were wounded, is still under investigation.
A series of blasts in Saudi Arabia late last year, which left one Briton dead and four other people wounded, have been linked to a multi-million-dollar alcohol smuggling business.
On November 17, Briton Christopher Rodway, 47, was killed and his wife, Jane, 50, was slightly injured when their car was blown up, in what police say appeared to be a booby trap, in central Riyadh.
Less than a week later, two Britons and an Irish woman were wounded, two just slightly, when their car exploded on November 22nd in the Saudi capital.
Several suspects, including a U.S. national, a Canadian, two Britons and a Belgian, are being held in the inquiry into the two attacks.
On December 15th, a Scot, David Brown, 32, was seriously wounded in a Khobar blast.
Saudi authorities have also detained a Canadian following a March 15th bomb blast in a metal bin outside a Riyadh bookshop that left a Briton and an Egyptian lightly wounded.
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