RIYADH, Aug 3 (AFP) - An Irish national was shot dead in Riyadh Tuesday in the first attack on a Westerner in Saudi Arabia since the mid-June killing of the local chief of the Al-Qaeda terror network.
Although the motives of the murder were not immediately clear, the incident appeared to put an end to the lull in attacks which terrorized Western residents of the oil-rich kingdom last spring.
Police "received a report at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) that a resident holding Irish citizenship was found killed in his office in the premises of a commercial enterprise in Riyadh," the capital`s police chief said in a terse statement.
Authorities are investigating the incident, Abdullah al-Shahrani added.
A Western diplomat told AFP the Irishman was shot four times in his office in an eastern district of the capital.
Dubai-based Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel reported that a gunman burst into the office in the Al-Rawda neighborhood and shot the 63-year-old engineer in the head and chest, apparently with a gun equipped with a silencer. It named the victim as Tony Christopher, who worked for the Rocky Trade and Construction firm.
No further details were immediately available, but the murder resembled some of the other attacks which targeted Western expatriates between early May and mid-June, when Saudi security forces gunned down Al-Qaeda`s local leader Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin.
Muqrin, head of "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula", and three associates were shot dead in Riyadh on June 18 shortly after they publicized pictures of the beheading of American engineer Paul Johnson, who had been abducted in the capital.
The execution was the pinnacle of the spate of attacks on Westerners, marking a new turn in the terror campaign by suspected Al-Qaeda extremists that began with a string of bombings in Riyadh in May 2003.
Authorities said two of Muqrin`s slain henchmen were involved in the anti-Western violence, which Al-Qaeda has vowed to carry on until the Muslim kingdom is "cleansed of infidels".
An Irish cameraman was shot dead and a British BBC journalist critically wounded in an attack in the Saudi capital on June 6, just a week after a shooting and hostage-taking rampage in the eastern oil city of Al-Khobar left 22 people dead, including four Westerners.
Six Westerners were killed when gunmen went on a shooting spree at a petrochemical plant in the Red Sea industrial port of Yanbu on May 1.
On May 22, a German national was shot dead outside a bank in Riyadh, and on June 2, an American serviceman who helps train the Saudi National Guard was slightly injured in another shooting outside the capital.
Two more US citizens were shot dead in Riyadh on June 8 and 12. In the June 8 incident, the American, who worked for Vinnell Corp that also helps train the National Guard, was fatally shot in his home and video footage of the murder was posted on an Islamist website.
Five days after Muqrin`s elimination, King Fahd offered an amnesty to suspected Al-Qaeda extremists who turned themselves in within a month, portraying it as a last chance for members of the "deviant group" to mend their ways or face a merciless crackdown.
But only six militants gave themselves up, and just one of those figured on a 26-strong most-wanted list issued by the kingdom in December.
Twelve militants on the list remain at large, while the others either have been killed in clashes with security forces or have surrendered.
Saudi authorities, who have rounded up hundreds of suspects since the violence erupted, have since again vowed to crush the extremists who spurned the pardon offer.
Some 90 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since May 2003.