A British reporter for the British Broadcasting Corp was in critical condition yesterday, a day after assailants wounded the correspondent and shot dead his Irish colleague while they were filming outside the house of a suspected al-Qaida militant.

　　Sunday's shooting in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh killed Simon Cumbers, 36, and injured BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, 42, according to the BBC.

　　It followed a string of dramatic attacks in the kingdom targeting foreigners and said to be carried out by militants inspired by or belonging to the anti-Western terror network led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.

　　In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed concern for the families of the two journalists, and said the shootings demonstrated the threat terrorists pose around the world.

　　"We have to be vigilant and get out and get after them and make sure we deal with this issue," Blair said.

　　Gardner was "in critical but stable condition," British Embassy spokesman Barrie Peach said yesterday. "He has been transferred to the intensive care unit at the Specialist Hospital."

　　In London, BBC director of news Richard Sambrook said Gardner had undergone surgery for abdominal wounds.

　　Western diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Gardner underwent emergency surgery at the Iman Hospital, close to the scene of the shooting, to remove two bullets from his abdomen, one from his leg and one from his hand, before being transferred to the Specialist Hospital.

　　Gardner and Cumbers were accompanied by a minder from the Information Ministry - standard procedure for cameramen and photographers - when they came under fire late Sunday afternoon in the ultraconservative Suweidi neighborhood.

　　The low-income, southern Riyadh neighborhood has been the scene of numerous confrontations between government forces and militants. Suweidi is home to 15 of the 26 suspects on the kingdom's most-wanted list, including al-Qaida's leader in Saudi Arabia, Abdel-Aziz al-Moqrin, according to Arab News, the leading English-language daily newspaper.

　　Security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities were investigating the incident and were interrogating the driver and minder who were with the BBC crew.

　　The Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Turki al-Faisal, told BBC radio the journalists had gone to film outside the house of a militant. Local press reports said security forces killed the militant in December.

　　"They got into a car with some guys from the Ministry of Information and they asked to be taken to a neighborhood in Riyadh where they wanted to do some filming on a previous al-Qaida member's whereabouts where he was captured," he said.

　　"As they were doing the filming, somebody drove by and fired at them," Prince Turki said.

　　Sambrook said the men were "shot with, as I understand it, some sort of machine pistol."

　　He said the BBC would have to consider its future reporting from Saudi Arabia in light of the attack.

　　(The Associated Press)