Three suspected Muslim militants gunned down a Briton in the Saudi capital Riyadh today, security sources and diplomats said.
They said the gunmen, driving past in a car, shot the man twice in the chest and twice in the head in a suburb east of the city near a shopping complex.
The Saudi Interior Ministry said in a statement the man was a British resident of Riyadh and that he was killed in the car park of the shopping centre.
Security sources named him as 50-year-old Mr Edward Smith, who worked for a communications firm.
The sources said the shooting was linked to a wave of anti-Western attacks in the world's largest oil exporter by supporters of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family, friends and colleagues of the Briton killed today in Riyadh," British Ambassador Mr Sherard Cowper-Coles said.
"They should know, and the terrorists must know, that his murder will only make the British government more determined to stand with the Saudi government and people in their battle against senseless terror of this kind," he added.