A suspected Saudi drug addict gunned down 11 relatives, including his wife and three daughters, before committing suicide, in a massacre on the final day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The official SPA news agency reported that the 40-year-old man, who was not identified, went on the shooting spree in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Tuesday after his wife was granted a divorce on the grounds of his drug-taking.
Also among the dead were his sister-in-law, at whose house the wife had taken refuge, the husband and their five children, police General Said Abdullah al-Qahtani told SPA.
Al-Jazirah newspaper said the victims were shot through the head at close range and included a baby girl of 18 months.
The man, armed with two revolvers and a stock of ammunition, fled from the house leaving the trail of carnage behind, after the gunshots and cries of victims alerted police, the regional police chief said.
He grabbed two other children and drove away in his sister-in-law's car, threatening to kill the hostages. After a three-hour chase, the man was trapped on a roof-top in Medina, circled by police.
"The police tried to reason with the murderer to spare the lives of the two children," said Qahtani, without disclosing their identity. "Finally, the killer ... backed down on his threat and shot himself dead."
Suicide is forbidden under the Islamic laws of Sharia that are strictly applied in Saudi Arabia.
Qahtani said the killer at the center of the deadliest spree of its kind in Saudi Arabia was "in a huge dispute with his wife that was brought before a court in Medina," a holy city to the north of Jeddah.
"The man carried out the massacre because his wife had accused him before a judge of taking drugs, and that led the judge to pronounce them divorced at the wife's request," according to Al-Jazirah.
In a similar case in February 1999, a Saudi under the influence of drugs killed his wife, two of their children and chopped off the hand of his third son. The murderer was caught, convicted and beheaded by the sword.
Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's holiest places, imposes the death penalty on people found guilty of murder, rape, apostasy, armed robbery, drug trafficking and repeated drug offences.
At least 113 executions, normally by decapitation, have been carried out in 2000, many of them for drugs offences, according to an AFP toll compiled from interior ministry statements -- JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
