Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

U.S. Officer Injured in Gun Attack in Saudi Arabia (Update2)

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. military officer suffered a gunshot wound after gunmen in Saudi Arabia opened fire on two vehicles leaving a military housing compound south of the capital, Riyadh, the U.S. embassy said.

At 8 a.m. local time, two U.S. officers in separate civilian vehicles drove out of the compound shared by U.S. and Saudi forces. ``One of the vehicles was hit and one of the drivers slightly injured,'' Carol Kalin, an embassy spokeswoman, said. A bullet grazed the man's wrist, Kalin said by telephone from Riyadh.

The attack is the second against a Western target in four days after 22 people, mostly Westerners and Indians, died at the weekend in Khobar on Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf coast in a militant shooting spree.

Saudi police today shot dead two militants connected to the Khobar attack, the official Saudi Press Agency reported, citing an unidentified interior ministry official. It didn't say how they were linked.

The police killed the two militants at 6 a.m. local time, ending a daylong chase of the suspects who were first spotted driving on a road between the towns of Taif and Mecca in western Saudi Arabia late on Tuesday, the agency said.

The suspects, one of whom was disguised as a woman, abandoned their car when the police started chasing them in a remote area, the agency said.

Saudi security forces have been hunting three gunmen who escaped the attacks in Khobar, 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Riyadh.

Saudi police captured the leader of the gang of four men who on Saturday took hostages at a housing compound used by foreign workers.



To contact the reporter on this story:
James Cordahi in Dubai on at [e-mail]

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Tim Coulter at [e-mail]
Last Updated: June 2, 2004 08:50 EDT


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