LONDON - BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner returned to work in a wheelchair Monday, 10 months after he was shot by suspected Islamic extremists in Saudi Arabia.
"I'm mentally fine... but physically my circumstances are very changed," said Gardner, 43, whose spinal nerves were hit in the attack last June that killed freelance Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers, 36.
"You won't catch me padding around the back streets of Riyadh any more, that's for sure," the seasoned Middle East reporter added.
Gardner and Cumbers came under fire in an impoverished neighbourhood in the Saudi capital as they filmed the house of a suspected Islamic extremist, Ibrahim al-Rayyes, killed six months earlier by Saudi security forces.
It was the first such attack on journalists in the kingdom, and followed by barely a week an assault and hostage-taking in the eastern Saudi oil city of Al-Khobar in which 22 people, including several Westerners, were killed.
Cumbers was killed on the spot, while Gardner spent a month in Saudi hospitals, undergoing the first of what would be a dozen operations which would keep him confined for eight months.
Now confined to a wheelchair, he said Monday he hoped to walk again with the aid of callipers or a walking frame. He is also writing a book on his experiences.
04/18/2005 16:09 GMT