AL KHOBAR, Oct 7: Saudi police Sunday drove away onlookers from the scene of a blast in this eastern Saudi city which Riyadh says killed a US citizen and an unidentified person and wounded four other people, including an American and a Briton.

But shops in the area were open for business and life in the vicinity of the site of Saturday’s blast appeared normal, except for the police standing guard near al-Mashari electronics store, where the rubble from the damage left by the explosion was being cleared.

The chief of the Eastern Province police, quoted by the official SPA news agency, confirmed Sunday that US citizen Michael Gerald Martin died in the blast, but added that authorities were still probing the identity of the second fatality.

Failure to identify the second man killed in the blast raised speculation he could have been the perpetrator of the attack, which occurred around 8:00 pm on Saturday outside the electronics store.

Al-Watan newspaper earlier quoted witnesses as saying that the blast appeared to have been caused by a suicide bomber, probably a Pakistani, who was killed instantly.

However, the report could not be confirmed and the authorities were still trying to identify the badly-mutilated second corpse.

Police at the scene on King Khaled Street and shop owners in the area said they had no information about the circumstances of the blast, and police prevented reporters from approaching the site.

A second American, identified by the Eastern Province police chief as Juan Filin, was badly hurt in the explosion and a Briton, identified as Iden Manco, slightly wounded in the blast, which a US official said was probably unrelated to the September 11 suicide jetliner attacks in New York and Washington.

The names of the American and British casualties could not be confirmed with the US and British embassies in Riyadh. But a British embassy spokeswoman told AFP the Briton’s condition was reassuring.

The other two wounded in the blast are Filipinos, Richard de la Jose, 33, and Diosdado Eaylomo, 37.

“We have no information that a Pakistani carried out the attack, and we have not been informed that there were Pakistani casualties in the explosion,” the deputy head of mission at Pakistan’s embassy in Riyadh, Etizaz Ahmad, told AFP.

Okaz newspaper, also quoting unnamed witnesses, said the body of one of the dead men was sliced in two, which suggested he could have been carrying the bomb.

Saudi officials did not speculate on the reasons for the attack, which follows a series of bombings in the kingdom linked to alcohol smuggling. A dozen Westerners are in jail awaiting trial as inquiries continue into bootlegging and the explosions, which began last November.

Several other newspapers said the second victim was probably a Filipino.—AFP