Another Briton Hurt In Bombing
A Briton remained hospitalized Saturday after being injured when a bomb exploded in eastern Saudi Arabia, the third to target Britons living in the Gulf Arab state in under a month, officials said on Saturday.
The man, David Brown from Scotland, was injured in the town of al-Khobar when a small parcel placed near the windscreen of his car exploded as he tried to remove it Friday, the victim's employers, Coca Cola International, said.
"We are concerned about David's condition at this stage, we are not speculating about the motives," Bashar al-Qadi, Coca Cola International's Public Affairs Manager for the Middle East and North Africa, told Reuters.
Qadi, who spoke from the firm's regional office in Bahrain, said Brown had been admitted to a hospital in al-Khobar immediately after the incident but was later transferred to a specialist hospital in the capital Riyadh.
He said Brown was in his mid 30s and had been employed in the customer services department at Coca Cola International in Saudi Arabia for more than two years.
"His condition is not life threatening but he has sustained burns on his face and other parts of his body," Qadi added.
In London, British Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain refused to speculate on why Britons had been targeted in bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia.
"It is very serious but I don't want to speculate on who is responsible," Hain said.
In an earlier report, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said that the explosive device looked like a juice carton.
SPA said Brown spotted the pack next to the windscreen and ignored warnings not to remove it. It said he drove the car and then stopped to remove the carton, which exploded as he held it in his right hand.
The agency said Brown's wife, who was with him at the time of the explosion, was not hurt.
The blast followed two other bomb attacks on Britons in the kingdom. One Briton was killed when his car exploded in the Saudi capital on Nov. 17. The car bomb killed Christopher Rodway, 48, and wounded his wife.
On Nov. 22, a bomb exploded in another car, wounding two men and a woman.
Saudi Arabia said earlier that it has detained several suspects in addition to a U.S. citizen in its probe of the two car bombings.
An Interior Ministry official had said that an American, Michael Sedlak, had been held in connection with the first bombing.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bombings, which Saudi authorities have said may have had personal, not political motives.
The attacks have heightened concerns that Westerners in the Middle East had become targets of rising anti-Western sentiment fuelled by the killing of hundreds of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in clashes during the recent weeks.
In Washington, a State Department official on Thursday confirmed that Sedlak was employed by a private firm in Saudi Arabia for the past few years.
"Mr. Sedlak has not been carged, nor have we been informed that any charges are being brought against him. What we do know is that Mr. Sedlak is being held for investigation by Saudi authorities," Greg Sullivan, a spokesman for the Near Eastern Affairs department said Thursday.
Sullivan said Sedlak was visited by a U.S. consular officer in the Saudi capital Saturday.
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