Gunmen fired at two US citizens Friday on a road in oil-rich Eastern Province, leaving one wounded, in the fourth anti-Western attack in Saudi Arabia in as many months, police said. "At 2:00 pm today... a car carrying two American nationals... came under fire from an unknown source, resulting in one of them being wounded and hospitalised," said a police spokesman, quoted by the official SPA news agency.
He was "in stable condition." The two Americans were travelling on a road in Shia-populated Al-Ihsaa governorate of eastern Saudi Arabia, he said. It was the fourth attack since October on Westerners in the kingdom, which in September joined a US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in Syria and Iraq.
Last month, Saudi authorities arrested three IS supporters for allegedly shooting and wounding a Dane in his car in Riyadh. The interior ministry said authorities arrested the suspected gunmen, driver and videographer, who wore masks during the shooting which was filmed and posted online by IS. The suspects, all Saudis, had "trained for two weeks" before the attack, authorities said.