Raid Qusti • Arab News

RIYADH, 13 June 2004 — Another Westerner was shot dead here yesterday, the third in a week.

“He was killed at 4 p.m.,” Riyadh’s police chief said, quoted by the Saudi Press Agency.

“The incident is being investigated by security authorities,” he said without giving further details.

Security men at the scene, who identified the victim as American, said he was believed to have worked for an electronics company involved in a strategic oil reserve project.

Sources have identified the victim as Kenneth Zaracuzi, 55, who was working for Advanced Electronics Company. However, the US Embassy said it was still establishing the identity of the victim.

A policeman at the scene said the American came under fire at 3.30 p.m. from a car with two passengers as he drove his light green Toyota Camry into the garage of his home in Qalaat Ayyoub Street in Dhubbat (officers’) neighborhood of Al-Malaz district.

A witness said three assailants, two of them wearing red shummaghs and one a white ghutra, jumped out of a Red Nissan Maxima and shot at the Westerner, spraying bullets through the rear window.

They then entered the garage and shot him in the head through the window on the driver’s side.

A passerby who saw the garage open reported the incident to the police.

“I saw the garage of the house open and the car inside when I was passing. I saw a Saudi headband on the floor. At first I thought it looked like someone had been in a brawl, so I asked my friend to stop so I could have a better look. When I got closer I saw a bullet hole in the rear window,” he told Arab News.

“I then saw a dead man in the car seat covered in blood. The side window of the driver’s seat was broken and I could see that he was shot in the head,” he added. Al-Arabiya television said police were chasing suspects in the east of the city. It was the third killing of a foreigner here in a week.

Neighbors said Zaracuzi had been living in the villa for two to three years. He was reportedly married to a Filipina, who was not in the villa at the time of the shooting.

Meanwhile a bomb squad rushed to an abandoned car that was belching flames near the entrance to Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University here. Al-Arabiya television said the green Toyota Camry had been found rigged with explosives in front of the university. The Civil Defense and special bomb squads rushed to the scene and after cordoning off the area towed away the car. It was not clear whether any explosives had already been detonated.

The area is home to IMSIU as well as a couple of housing compounds.

Also yesterday, the minister for Islamic affairs said the recent surge of attacks against foreigners did not mean terrorism had reached crisis point in the Kingdom. “If you look back through the efforts of the Saudi government in tackling terrorism, they have destroyed half of the terrorist force,” Saleh Al-Asheikh told journalists at the Saudi Embassy in London.

Reacting to yesterday’s shooting and other recent terrorist attacks in the Kingdom, US Ambassador James C. Oberwetter said Americans who choose to remain here should “exercise the utmost caution as they go about their daily lives.”