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Irishman shot dead in Saudi Arabia

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Higgins, who was working as an engineer in the capital, Riyadh, is the brother of prominent Irish poet Rita Ann Higgins.
Higgins was working as an engineer for Rocky for Trade and Construction, a Saudi-owned construction company.
Conflicting reports indicated that either one gunman or two burst into the Higgins’ office.
He was shot four times, according to initial reports.
The attack was quickly linked to Islamic fundamentalist terrorists but robbery was not completely ruled out according to local accounts of the shooting.
The dead man was the second Irish national to die violently in Saudi Arabia this year.
An Irish cameraman working for the BBC, Simon Cumbers, was shot dead in Riyadh in June.
Al-Qaeda was held responsible by Saudi authorities for the murder of Cumbers.
Cumbers, who was 36, was from County Meath.
Ironically, Cumbers was working on a report about increasing fear among foreign workers in Saudi Arabia in the wake of an earlier terror attack that killed 22 people in the city of Khobar.
The Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin has a current travel advisory in place that warns Irish nationals not to undertake non-essential travel to Saudi Arabia.
Estimates put the number of Irish nationals currently working in Saudi Arabia at between 1,200 and 1,400.

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