JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - A British banker was killed yesterday when a bomb shattered the sport utility vehicle he was driving through the quiet residential neighborhood where he lived in Riyadh, the capital.
The 35-year-old victim, identified by Saudi police as Simon John Veness, was alone in the Land Rover Discovery when it exploded early yesterday, soon after he pulled away from the house where he lived with his wife and young son. The police said the cause of the blast was under investigation.
Saudi law enforcement officials have attributed a series of similar attacks over the past few years to expatriates engaged in a turf war in the lucrative black market trade in liquor.
The kingdom's Islamic laws ban alcohol and virtually all forms of public entertainment, making it a restrictive place to live for Westerners, who will pay $150 for a bottle of liquor.
But there are also widespread fears in the expatriate community that the bombings, not all of which follow the same pattern, could be anti-Western attacks carried out by al-Qaida cells loyal to Osama bin Laden, who is a Saudi native, or by his sympathizers.
This week the government announced the arrest of 11 men, nine of them Saudis, and said they were linked to an al-Qaida cell that has planned violent operations, including a failed attempt to shoot down a U.S. military aircraft.
It was the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks that Saudi Arabia directly linked anyone in the kingdom to al-Qaida.
The announcement prompted the British Embassy, among others, to warn its subjects in the kingdom to be especially vigilant about their security.
In the absence of information from the Saudi Interior Ministry, each attack spawns rumors about turf wars and terrorism in the expatriate community - an estimated 100,000 bankers, business people, engineers and military personnel.
Anti-Western sentiment has spread in the kingdom since the start of the American campaign against terrorism, which is widely perceived as a veiled assault on Islam. The instability in the Mideast has deepened those feelings, with many here expressing strong sympathy for the Palestinian cause.