World

Riyadh Car Blast Kills Brit

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 17, 2000 / 9:07 AM EST / CBS

An explosion killed a Briton and wounded his wife in their car in the Saudi capital Friday shortly before the opening of an international energy conference attended by officials from more than 40 countries.

The incident was seen as an embarrassment for the Saudis, coming just hours before Crown Prince Abdullah opened the energy conference in the capital of the oil-rich kingdom.

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman identified the victim as Christopher Rodway, and his wife Jane, both in their late 40s. They had been in Saudi Arabia for eight years and Rodway had worked as an engineer in a hospital, he said.

A source close to the investigation said Rodway worked as a technician at a Saudi military hospital in Riyadh.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion, which occurred after Muslim Friday prayers.

But anti-Western sentiment is running high in the Arab world over perceived support of Israel in its clashes with Palestinians, which have killed at least 230 people, most of them Palestinians, in the past seven weeks.

An official at al-Hammadi private hospital told Reuters by telephone that Rodway died shortly after his arrival and his wife was discharged after treatment for minor injuries.

"He was bleeding heavily. One of his lower limbs was amputated," she said.

The couple's car may have been booby-trapped, according to a statement from Riyadh Police Chief Abdullah al-Shahrani. Earlier Saudi sources had said an explosive device was thrown into the vehicle from the outside.

The explosion comes five weeks after a man lobbed a bomb at the British embassy in neighboring Yemen.

No one was hurt in that blast which followed the October 12 apparent suicide bombing that crippled the destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 sailors as it refueled in the southern Yemeni port of Aden.

The 1:23 p.m. explosion threw one of the passengers from the four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Police cordoned off the area, near a major intersection in the northern part of Riyadh, and refused to allow reporters to approach the car which was being carried away on a truck.

Witnesses said the car was moving when the blast occurred. Police sprayed water to wash away a pool of blood nearby.

U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and European Union Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio are among the officials attending the two-day oil conference.

Saudi Arabia is a major U.S. ally in the region and was a springboard for the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait in 1991, but it has been prominent in Arab protests against Israel's use of force against the Palestinians.

Many in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, are critical of the continued presence of U.S. forces since the Gulf War ended Iraq's seven-month occupation of neighboring Kuwait.

Two powerful explosions in 1995 and 1996 against U.S. targets in Riyadh and the ol-rich eastern region of Dhahran killed 24 Americans.

U.S. officials say they suspect Muslim militants in the two attacks.