Saudi bombing claims second victim, five hurt

The bomb blast in the eastern Saudi city of Khobar yesterday has claimed a second victim

The bomb blast in the eastern Saudi city of Khobar yesterday has claimed a second victim. It was confirmed yesterday that an American was killed in the blast but the identity of the second fatality has not been released. Five others where injured in the bombing.

In Washington, US officials said they saw no immediate link with last month's attacks on the US for which Saudi-born Osama bin Laden is the prime suspect.

It is not immediately clear if the blast was politically motivated or another in the series of bombings that have rocked Saudi Arabia in the last year which local newspapers link to a lucrative illegal alcohol trade. Saudi Arabia has detained several Westerners for those blasts in which at least one Briton was killed.

The city was site of a deadly attack five years ago in which 19 US servicemen died.

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A Saudi journalist, speaking to Qatar's al-Jazeera television, quoted witnesses as saying that the explosion was a suicide attack perhaps carried out by a Pakistani or an Afghan.

The United States in June charged 14 suspected militants - 13 Saudis and one Lebanese - for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and accused elements of the Iranian government of being behind the attack. Iran has denied involvement.

The Saudi Press Agency quoted a senior police officer as saying two people had been killed and four wounded, all foreigners, in the blast that occurred at about 8 pm (6 pm Irish time) yesterday in front of a shop on King Khalid Street in Khobar.

The officer, who is in charge of the eastern region, said authorities were investigating. The nationalities of the dead and wounded would be released later, he added.

A US embassy official in Riyadh said one American was killed and another wounded in yesterday's blast. Neither was in the military. "It appears that a pedestrian threw a package bomb into the shopping area...The motives are completely unknown," the embassy official said.

An official at Khobar's King Fahd University Hospital said the wounded were an American, a Briton and two Filipinos. He said he did not know the nationalities of those killed.