SAUDI ARABIA: An Irish cameraman was shot and killed and a British journalist wounded yesterday when gunmen fired on them as they filmed in an Islamist militant area of the Saudi capital Riyadh.
Mr Simon Cumbers (36), a cameraman who worked for many years in radio and television in Dublin and the North, died immediately in the shooting in the Suweidi slum district. His colleague, security correspondent Mr Frank Gardner (42), was seriously injured in the gun attack.
The Department of Foreign Affairs last night confirmed that an Irish citizen had been killed in Riyadh yesterday.
A spokesman said the man would not be identified until his relatives had been informed. He said diplomats at the Irish Embassy in Riyadh had been notified about the man's death earlier in the day.
Mr Cumbers, whose death was announced on the BBC News last night, worked as a news reporter in pirate radio in Dublin while still a teenager. He trained as a cameraman and moved to the North, where he worked for ITN, before settling in Britain. An experienced war reporter, he covered the conflict in Iraq last year. He owned his own film production company based in London.
Yesterday's attack was the fourth deadly attack on Westerners in the kingdom, the world's biggest oil exporter, in five weeks.
A Western diplomat said the two journalists were in a car with a Saudi driver in the Suweidi district, filming the house of an al- Qaeda militant killed last year in a security crackdown, when they came under fire.
Saudi television pictures from the scene showed a Western man, alive but bloodied, lying in the middle of the road before being helped into a vehicle by Saudi security men.
The British embassy in Riyadh said in a statement: "We can confirm that a British national was wounded and another non-British national was killed in a shooting in a southern Riyadh area this evening." In London, the British Foreign Office said the wounded Briton was in a serious condition and was undergoing surgery in a Riyadh hospital.
Diplomats had said initially that both men were Britons, and the Saudi Interior Ministry said in a statement that unknown men fired at two Britons in a poor Riyadh district, resulting in the death of one and the wounding of the other. But diplomats later said the cameraman was Irish.
The attack came a week after al-Qaeda militants killed 22 people, 19 of them foreigners, in a shooting and hostage-taking spree in the eastern Saudi oil city of Khobar.
The attack helped push world oil prices to record highs before producers pledged to raise output.
The Suweidi district, west of Riyadh, is a stronghold of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda followers and 15 of the 26 most wanted militants in the kingdom, including the leader of the group in Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, come from there.
Security sources said the gunmen fled after the shooting.
Saudi security forces set up roadblocks and patrols across the capital after the attack.
Saudi Arabia has been battling al-Qaeda militants for more than a year, and security forces have arrested many suspected militants in Suweidi in recent months.
Authorities are still hunting for three men who carried out the Khobar attack and managed to escape.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Sunday that militants were going after soft, random targets. He called on foreign governments to hand over Saudi dissidents abroad with alleged links to the violence that has rocked the kingdom.
At least 80 people have been killed since May last year in a string of suicide bombings and attacks on Westerners blamed on al-Qaeda.
Security forces have killed or arrested nine on the list of 26 top militants.
The Department has issued a travel advisory on Saudi Arabia, cautioning against "non-essential" travel to the kingdom.
Irish citizens in Saudi Arabia are advised to maintain high levels of security and to keep a low profile.