RIYADH, 8 June 2004 — Security forces yesterday hunted for gunmen who shot dead BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers and seriously wounded its security correspondent Frank Gardner in a Riyadh area known for Al-Qaeda sympathizers.

Sunday’s attack, the fourth in five weeks on Westerners in the Kingdom, heightened security fears among the expatriates here.

Gardner, 42, who suffered wounds mainly to the abdomen and the legs, was in a coma after extensive surgery.

“He is still under observation in the ICU,” said a supervisor at King Faisal Specialist Hospital where Gardner had been moved for emergency surgery late at night.

“Gardner is unconscious (but) his situation is stable and the doctors are hopeful about him,” a doctor told reporters. The hospital had earlier described his condition as “very critical” but stable, and said “he has improved in the last six hours”.

The hotel where Gardner was staying received several calls from people expressing shock and dismay.

Al-Arabiya television showed footage of Gardner sitting on the tarmac with multiple bullet wounds as bystanders looked on. According to a police officer, he pleaded for his life shouting to onlookers to help him.

The crew were in the Suwaidi district, filming the house of Al-Qaeda militant Ibrahim Al-Rayyes, who was killed nearby last year in a shootout with the police.

The BBC journalists were with an Information Ministry minder when they were attacked. According to reports the man, identified as Yahya Sabbagh, is being questioned, as is the driver Mubarak Al-Dossari. Both had escaped unharmed.

Security sources said the gunmen separated the Saudi escort from the journalists before shooting them.

But British Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles said the BBC team appeared to be victims of an opportunist attack.

“It looks as though there was a drive-by shooting. Whether they actually knew Simon and Frank were in the area, I doubt. But Westerners operating in this area of Riyadh with a camera would obviously be vulnerable,” he said.

“There is a serious and chronic terrorist threat, and people — particularly Westerners, particularly Britons and Americans — need to exercise extreme vigilance and consider their personal safety,” Cowper-Coles said.

A statement purportedly from Al-Qaeda militants in the Kingdom warned yesterday of new attacks on US and Western airlines.

“All compounds, bases and means of transport, especially Western and American airlines, will be a direct target for our coming operations in the near future,” said the statement, posted on a pro-Al-Qaeda site on the Internet. It asked Muslims to keep away from Americans and other Westerners to avoid falling victim to an attack by the network.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair attempted to rope Gardner, an expert on Al-Qaeda, into the US-led war on terror.

“This is a struggle against these terrorists who will kill innocent people who are involved in our democracy,” Blair told the BBC. “We have seen since Sept. 11 and Bali and Madrid that they are a threat in literally every part of the world and we have to be vigilant and get out and get after them and make sure we deal with this issue.”

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned the shooting and said his country “would continue to do all we can to support the Saudi authorities in their fight against terrorism”.

Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi ambassador to the UK and the Kingdom’s former intelligence chief, said terrorists were going after individuals and soft targets because a security clampdown had made it hard for them to organize major attacks.

He said the Kingdom was “doing everything possible” to protect foreigners.

The BBC said Simon Cumbers, 36, was “a freelance journalist and cameraman who has worked throughout the world filming international news stories for the BBC and for other news organizations.”

Cumbers was the director of Locum Productions. After several years as a radio reporter in Ireland and a television correspondent with ITN in the UK, he retrained to become a cameraman. Cumbers worked around the globe filming and editing major news events for international broadcasters, including the war in Iraq.

His body lies in the morgue at the Riyadh Central Hospital.

— Additional input from agencies