SAUDI ARABIA: Fourth French victim dies from militant attack in Saudi Arabia.

A French teenager has died from bullet wounds, bringing to four the number of victims from a militant attack in Saudi Arabia on a group of French tourists in which the males were singled out and shot. The boy's father was among three French expatriates working in Saudi Arabia who were killed during a desert trip on Monday (February 26) in what appeared to be the first attack by suspected al Qaeda militants on foreigners in three years. A group of nine French nationals living in Riyadh had been visiting historic sites and camping in the desert in the scenic western region of the vast country. An acquaintance who did not want to be named said the men were machine-gunned in front of the women and children in the group, confirming a report from a security source. Doctor Metwakkil Hajjaj at the King Fahed hospital said the teenager was called Mubarak, the Muslim son of a French woman of Moroccan origin. He was 17. At the request of the teenager's mother, prayers will be held over the bodies of her husband and son at the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina, Islam's second holiest city. One of the dead Frenchmen was a secondary school teacher and two others worked with French firm Schneider Electric. The bodies will be flown to Riyadh and France. Islamic militants swearing allegiance to al Qaeda launched a violent campaign to topple the U.S.-allied Saudi monarchy in 2003, with suicide bomb attacks on foreigners and government installations, including the oil industry. There had been no major attacks targeting foreigners since 2004, when the violence was at its height. Frenchman Laurent Barbot was shot dead in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah by suspected al Qaeda militants in September 2004. The Islamist radicals have said they want to drive "infidel" Westerners out of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest sites.

ITN Source | February 28, 2007