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Third Car Bombing In Month Injures Briton In Saudi Arabia
RIYADH (AFP) - A third car bombing in a month has badly injured another Briton working in Saudi Arabia, despite the arrest of a U.S. national and several other suspects since the previous attacks, the interior ministry said.
A ministry spokesman said the man, a soft drinks company employee in the kingdom's Eastern Province, was "seriously wounded in the hand" in the explosion late Friday.
His employers, Coca-Cola International, named the latest victim as David Brown, a Scot in his early 30s who has worked as customer services manager in the eastern town of Khobar for the past two years.
The device had been concealed inside a small box resembling a fruit juice container placed on the windscreen of the Briton's car, the interior ministry spokesman said, quoted by the official SPA agency.
The box exploded as Brown tried to remove it, he said. Brown was with his wife, who escaped unhurt.
The Briton was first treated in Khobar before being transferred to a specialist hospital in Riyadh for surgery, said Bashar al-Kadhi, a spokesman for Coca-Cola's regional offices for the Middle East and North Africa.
He declined to speculate on any link to calls for boycott of U.S. products in the Arab world in retaliation for Washington's support of Israel.
"His well-being is our primary concern, and other members of his family are being flown in to see him. We are leaving the investigation to the interior ministry," Kadhi said.
A British embassy official said Brown suffered injuries to his face and right hand, "but his condition is not life-threatening."
In London, a senior government official said the latest attack was "very serious" and that Britons in the region had received special advice on extra security precautions.
"I don't want to speculate on who was responsible," Peter Hain, junior minister at the Foreign Office, told BBC radio, while noting that Britain's hard line on Iraq had stirred criticism in the region.
"We have issued special advice on extra security, especially with cars, to make sure people check and remain vigilant," he said.
Hain said a British police team was already sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate last month's attacks jointly with the Saudi authorities, which had "cooperated fully."
The blast was the third to target Britons working in the oil-rich Gulf Arab state since mid-November, raising the casualty toll to one dead and five injured. The British community numbers around 30,000.
Earlier Friday, the interior ministry said several suspects, including an American identified as Michael Sedlak, were being held for questioning as suspects in the two earlier bombings.
Christopher Rodway, a 47-year-old Briton working at a military hospital in Riyadh, was killed, and his wife, Jane, slightly injured in the first car bomb attack on November 17th.
Three other Britons were injured in a similar attack in Riyadh on November 23rd.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts, which have taken place at a time of heightened anti-western sentiment in Arab countries stirred by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz, whose country has portrayed the attacks as criminal rather than politically motivated, said there was proof implicating Sedlak in the November 17th bombing.
"If further investigations confirm his role in the incidents, he will be sent to the Sharia’ [Islamic] court," said Prince Ahmad, whose country beheads convicted murderers under strict Islamic laws.
The Saudi newspaper Al-Iqtissadiya reported Thursday that there was a "financial dispute" between Sedlak and Rodway who owed the American large sums of money.
The latest attack took place in the same town as where a June 1996 truck-bomb attack on a U.S. military housing complex killed 19 U.S. servicemen. The attack was blamed on individuals seeking to drive out American forces.
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