BBC correspondent Frank Gardner lay in a coma in critical condition after suspected Islamic militants riddled him with bullets and killed his Irish cameraman on the streets of the Saudi capital. The shooting Sunday evening came as Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal renewed a vow to defeat Islamist extremists waging a war to chase Western “infidels” from Saudi Arabia. Gardner, aged 42, was “in a coma and very critical,” one doctor said Monday, adding however that bleeding had stopped and “he has improved in the last six hours”. Freelance cameraman Simon Cumbers, 36, died in a hail of gunfire on a street outside the home of a top wanted militant in a slum area of southern Riyadh known as a hotbed of hardliners. Gardner, the BBC security correspondent and Al-Qaeda expert, was hit in the stomach and legs and, local newspapers reported, left for dead by the fleeing attackers. But he survived and pleaded for his life, shouting to bystanders to help a fellow Muslim, a police officer told AFP. Full Story
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