RIYADH - Riddled with bullets, BBC correspondent Frank Gardner pleaded for his life in the Saudi capital shouting to bystanders to help a fellow Muslim, a police officer said on Monday.
"I'm a Muslim, help me, I'm a Muslim, help me," the British father of two daughters cried in Arabic, the officer said.
Gardner was stretched on the road, covered in blood from multiple bullet wounds in a slum area of southern Riyadh known as a hotbed of hardliners.
A fluent Arabic speaker with a degree in Arab and Islamic Studies, he was carrying a small copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, a device used by Westerner reporters to try to reassure Islamist militants.
He was gravely wounded and his Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers killed Sunday evening as they filmed near the home of Ibrahim al-Rayyes, a wanted terror suspect killed in a clash with security forces in the area last December.
Gardner was in a coma on Monday at King Faisal Specialist Hospital after undergoing emergency surgery.
"He is in a coma and very critical," one doctor said, adding however that bleeding had stopped and "he has improved in the last six hours."
The 42-year-old was hit by many bullets to the stomach and feet and transferred to the capital's Al-Iman Hospital.
Saudi newspapers reported that the gunmen had left him for dead.
"Frank is in a critical but stable condition in intensive care after surgery," a British embassy spokesperson said earlier Monday.
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