JEDDAH/RIYADH, 27 September 2004 — Security forces exchanged fire with suspected terrorists in the capital Riyadh yesterday, less than 24 hours after a French engineer was gunned down in Jeddah.
The Frenchman, who worked for the military technology systems company Thales, was shot dead on a quiet residential street in Jeddah. The incident, which occurred at 1 a.m. yesterday, marks the first terrorist attack against a Western national in Jeddah, as well as against a French national in the Kingdom.
Yesterday’s attack came 10 days after the killing of a British national in Riyadh.
Laurent Barbot, 45, was shot through the front window of his car while driving back to Al-Zahra district’s Sierra Village compound, home to a large expatriate community. Residents and neighbors told Arab News that Barbot had been sick on Saturday and had not gone to work. Just after midnight, he left home in his white Mitsubishi Pajero and went to the Giant Store supermarket located less than 400 meters from the residential compound.
As Barbot left the supermarket parking lot and headed back toward the compound down a quiet residential street, he slowed down at a speed bump. It was at that moment that an unknown car pulled up alongside Barbot. The car’s occupants opened fire with a light machine gun striking Barbot in the neck and chest killing him.
A witness, who heard the shots from the Giant Store car park, drove toward the sound of the gunfire. As he approached, he saw Barbot’s Mitsubishi Pajero driving erratically, weaving from side to side on the road. It came to a halt angled as if about to enter a villa close by. Initially the witness thought that the car was maneuvering to enter the shuttered gateway, but drawing nearer he saw that the driver himself was “moving in an unnatural way.”
As the witness looked on, he saw the victim bleeding and “close to death, taking his last breath.” Police were alerted and special security forces cordoned off the surrounding streets and set up checkpoints in both directions on the roads running past the store.
Sources from the scene said that two bullets had gone through the front window of the car. “We can say that through a preliminary investigation, this appears to be a terrorist attack,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki.
Thales (formerly Thomson-CSF) said it did not know why Barbot, who was one of 250 employees with the group working in Saudi Arabia, had been killed. Thales is currently working on a military project in Jeddah and the eastern industrial city of Jubail.
“We have no details about this abominable attack,” Thales chief Jean-Paul Perrier said in Paris. “We don’t know if it was random or a premeditated attack.” He said the company was planning to stay in the Kingdom.
A spokeswoman for the French Consulate in Jeddah confirmed that Barbot’s family has been informed. A resident of Sierra Village who knew the victim told Arab News that he was a widower.
French residents on the compound were advised to remain at home yesterday.
In response to the shooting, the French Embassy in Riyadh issued a warning to its nationals in the Kingdom and raised the security level to status Orange.
In Riyadh, gunfire was heard from Al-Shifa neighborhood, south of the capital, which was blocked off by special forces, witnesses told Arab News.
Security sources said the firefight erupted when three terror suspects in a car refused to stop at a checkpoint near the Al-Awda market in the neighborhood. Special forces shot at the trio who returned fire, wounding a Pakistani taxi driver, the sources said.
The militants then took off in another car they stole at gunpoint from a passing Saudi motorist. The security forces said three militants were wounded in the exchange of fire. The motorist said one of them was killed.
Witnesses said the security forces chased the suspects to the neighboring Al-Suwaidi neighborhood where they proceeded to carry out house-to-house searches.
The shootout destroyed front sides of several shops along Tirmidi Street.
Witnesses also said a group of wanted militants opened fire at police from the terrace of a building, setting off the confrontation. Witnesses described the car taken by the militants from the Saudi as a brown 99 model Ford. Security forces have cordoned off the area after the militants ran away to Suwaidi.
Yesterday’s incident in Jeddah was the latest in a series of shootings targeting Westerners in the Kingdom, which has been battling a deadly wave of terror attacks since May 2003 blamed on Al-Qaeda sympathizers.
The United States, whose nationals have on several occasions been the target of terror attacks in the Kingdom, decided in August against reinstating non-emergency staff at its embassy in Riyadh, renewing its warning to US citizens against travel to Saudi Arabia.
Britain and Canada, as well as Scandinavian countries advise their citizens against non-essential travel to the Kingdom, recommending that those who need to visit for business should take added precautionary measures.
South Africa and New Zealand — whose communities in the Kingdom number around 5,000 and 600, respectively — advise their citizens simply to exercise caution.
On Sept. 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 civil engineer was killed in the capital on Aug. 3.
Both incidents were claimed by “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula”, the terror network’s Saudi branch.
The Kingdom has been hunting Al-Qaeda supporters in the country whose local leader, Abdul Aziz Al-Muqrin, was killed in mid-June shortly after his group published pictures of the beheading of US engineer Paul Johnson, kidnapped June 12 in Riyadh.
(With input from Roger Harrison, Essam Al-Ghalib, Muneef Al-Safouqi and Hassan Adawi)
