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RIYADH - A French teenager died from bullet wounds today, bringing to four the number of victims from a militant attack in Saudi Arabia on a group of French tourists in which the males were singled out and shot.
The boy's father was among three French expatriates working in Saudi Arabia who were killed during a desert trip on Monday in what appeared to be the first attack by suspected al Qaeda militants on foreigners in three years.
A group of nine French nationals living in Riyadh had been visiting historic sites and camping in the desert in the scenic western region of the vast country.
An acquaintance who did not want to be named said the men were machine-gunned in front of the women and children in the group, confirming a report from a security source.
"He (the boy) died from the consequences of his shoulder injury. Part of the bullet was still there. He was bleeding. We carried out an operation but it was no good. He died this morning," chief hospital doctor Metwakkil Hajjaj told Reuters by telephone from Medina.
He said the teenager was called Mubarak, the Muslim son of a French woman of Moroccan origin. He was 17.
Prayers will be held over the bodies of the son and his father at the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina, Islam's second holiest city, French ambassador Charles-Henri d'Aragon said in Medina. The father converted to Islam last year.
One of the dead Frenchmen was a secondary school teacher and two others worked with French firm Schneider Electric.
The bodies will be flown to Riyadh and France.
Islamic militants swearing allegiance to al Qaeda launched a violent campaign to topple the US-allied Saudi monarchy in 2003, with suicide bomb attacks on foreigners and government installations, including the oil industry.
There had been no major attacks targeting foreigners since 2004, when the violence was at its height. Frenchman Laurent Barbot was shot dead in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah by suspected al Qaeda militants in September 2004.
The Islamist radicals have said they want to drive "infidel" Westerners out of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest sites.
King Abdullah said in June that al Qaeda militants had been "defeated" and were "finished". The authorities arrested dozens of al Qaeda sympathisers in recent months, some of whom were planning attacks, and called on Saudis to be vigilant.
President Jacques Chirac on Monday called on Riyadh to track down the attackers and ensure foreigners' safety. On Tuesday King Abdullah telephoned him vowing action, Saudi media said.
Tough security measures and a powerful publicity campaign helped crush the violence but analysts and diplomats have said the underlying drives of radical Islamic ideology and anger at Western policy in the region remain strong.
Some of the estimated 100,000 Western residents in Saudi Arabia left after the earlier attacks, bringing the number down to around 60,000, but many have since returned, diplomats say.
- REUTERS
