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US security contractor shot dead in Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh US security contractor shot dead in Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh
(35 minutes later)
A US national was shot dead and another wounded in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on Tuesday, police said, in what appeared to be the first killing of a westerner in years in a gun attack in the kingdom. An American defence contractor was shot dead and another injured in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, the State Department said.
Police later shot and wounded an assailant and then arrested him, said the brief statement, carried by SPA, the state media agency said. The two US citizens were employees of Vinnell Arabia, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, the Virginia-based defence and security giant.
“The attack resulted in the killing of one person and the wounding of another and it turned out they were of American citizenship,” it said. They were shot at a gas station and store about half-a-mile from the Vinnell Arabia base, where contractors working with the Saudi Arabian national guard military programs operate, according to Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman. The base is about 20 miles from the US embassy.
A US official said both victims were working with a private security contractor, Vinnell Arabia. The company was working with the Saudi national guard, the official said. Police later shot and wounded a suspect and then arrested him, according to a statement carried by SPA, the state media agency. “The attack resulted in the killing of one person and the wounding of another and it turned out they were of American citizenship,” it said.
Police said the attack happened when the two stopped their vehicle at a gas station in an eastern district of the capital. The State Department said the US embassy in Riyadh would issue a message advising American citizens on the security situation and any precautions they should take.
The last reported killings of westerners by armed assailants in Saudi Arabia happened in 2007 when three French nationals were shot dead while camping in the north-west of the country. Vinnell Arabia operates under a longstanding contract from the US army to provide training services to the Saudi national guard.
Saudi Arabia is a member of the US-led coalition conducting a campaign of air strikes against extremists with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Nine Vinnell employees, seven of them American, were among 36 people killed in May 2003 when three residential compounds in Riyadh were attacked with car bombs.
But the motive behind the fatal shooting is not yet known and an investigation is under way, the interior ministry spokesman, Major General Mansour Turki, said. At the time the company employed about 300 US citizens in Riyadh out of a total of 800 staff.
The assailant, who was wounded in the attack and then detained, is a Saudi national who was born in the United States, Turki told Reuters. He added that a third US national in a separate vehicle witnessed the attack. In 2010, Northrop Grumman announced that Vinnell had won a contract worth up to $550m to “continue the modernisation and training” of the Saudi national guard. Vinnell contractors would “provide US Army-based doctrine and military training as well as logistics and support services” around the kingdom, it said in a statement.