RIYADH, Sept 26 (AFP) - A French national was shot dead early Sunday in Saudi Arabia`s economic capital Jeddah, the official SPA news agency reported quoting the interior ministry.
"A resident of French nationality was the target of shots that brought about his death on Sunday at 1 am (2200 GMT Saturday) in the Al-Zahra district of Jeddah," a ministry spokesman said.
He added that an inquiry was under way into the shooting of the unidentified Frenchman.
The spokesman did not give any motives for the murder, the latest in a country that has seen more than its share of killings of expatriates or western targets.
On September 15 a British national was killed in a shooting in Riyadh. He worked for telecommunications company Marconi, which advises the Saudi national guard.
An Irish engineer died in Riyadh on August 3. Both his murder and that of the British expat were claimed by the Saudi cell of Osama bin Laden`s Al-Qaeda terror network.
On September 11 two blasts occurred hours apart near two Saudi and western banks in Jeddah, and the authorities announced the arrest of two suspects.
The Saudis have been hunting supporters of Al-Qaeda in the kingdom whose local leader, Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, was killed in mid-June shortly after his group "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" published on Islamist websites pictures of the murder of US engineer Paul Marshall Johnson, kidnapped June 12 in Riyadh.
Since the wave of violence began in May last year, about 90 people have been killed and hundreds more wounded, including many foreigners.