Briton shot dead

Three suspected Muslim militants gunned down a Briton in the Saudi capital Riyadh yesterday, security sources and diplomats said.

They said the gunmen, driving past in a car, shot the man twice in the chest and twice in the head in a suburb east of the city near a shopping complex.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said the man was a British resident of Riyadh and that he was killed in the car park of the shopping centre. The British embassy confirmed his nationality but declined to give his name.

The sources said the shooting was linked to a wave of anti-Western attacks in the world's largest oil exporter by supporters of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Al Qaeda, which Washington says carried out the September 11 attacks on US cities, has waged since 2003 a campaign of suicide bombings and shootings in the oil-rich kingdom aimed at driving Westerners out and hurting the economy and oil industry.

Around 90 policemen and civilians, many of them foreigners, have been killed.

In August, an Irish civil engineer was killed by at least one gunman who burst into his office in Riyadh.