An Irish cameraman has been killed and a British journalist wounded in Saudi Arabia: Irish cameraman shot dead in Saudi capital. (Hat tip: Colt.)

RIYADH (Reuters) - An Irish cameraman has been shot and killed and a British journalist wounded after gunmen fired on them as they filmed in an Islamist militant area of the Saudi capital Riyadh, security sources and diplomats say. The BBC monitoring service quoted Arab television as saying the cameraman worked for the BBC, but the BBC press office had no immediate comment. It was the fourth deadly attack on Westerners in the kingdom, the world’s biggest oil exporter, in five weeks.

A Western diplomat said the two journalists were in a car with a Saudi driver in the Suweidi district, filming the house of an al Qaeda militant killed last year in a security crackdown, when they came under fire. Saudi television pictures from the scene showed a Western man, alive but bloodied, lying in the middle of the road before being helped into a vehicle by Saudi security men.

The British embassy in Riyadh said in a statement: “We can confirm that a British national was wounded and another non-British national was killed in a shooting in a southern Riyadh area this evening.”

Riyadh has “Islamist militant areas?” Whole areas? What happened to that completely crime-free environment Arab News editor John R. Bradley bragged to us about?

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