Saudi Arabian diplomat was shot dead in Dhaka.—AFP Photo

DHAKA: A Saudi Arabian diplomat was shot in the chest and died in the Bangladeshi capital in the early hours of Tuesday, police told AFP.

Police found Khalaf al-Ali's body at an intersection just two buildings away from his residence in the city's upmarket Gulshan district and rushed him to a hospital where he died three hours later, Dhaka police deputy commissioner Lutful Kabir said.

“He was hit by a bullet in the left chest,” he said, adding that police were investigating the murder of the 45-year-old head of Saudi citizen affairs at the embassy.

The location of the shooting was cordoned off by police and security was stepped up in the diplomatic area of the city.

“One of our diplomatic staff was killed near his house in Gulshan this morning. This is sad,” Saudi ambassador Abdullah Bin Naser al-Busairi told private news agency UNB.

“We hope the government will catch the killers.”

Another senior policeman, Nizamul Hoque, told AFP the diplomat had been living alone in a rented apartment in Gulshan for several years.

“He has been a regular late-night walker. Sometime he would walk up to 2 am in the night,” he said, adding that the bullet had struck his heart.

Yusuf Jamil, a spokesman for United Hospital, said the diplomat had been admitted to the intensive care unit after he was brought in by police but could not be resuscitated.

Saudi Arabia is a key ally of and a major donor to Bangladesh, but ties have become strained in recent years after Riyadh tightened recruitment from the South Asian country.

More than two million Bangladeshis -- a quarter of the impoverished nation's large migrant population -- work in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

There was also outrage last October when eight Bangladeshis were beheaded in the Saudi capital after being convicted for robbery and murder.