“The criminal acts will not weaken the determination of the kingdom to fight this lost minority who are isolated religiously, socially, and intellectually,” foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal told reporters on Sunday.

“These lost people are now, with cowardly attacks, striking blindly against easy targets,” the minister told reporters in Jeddah at about the same time as the BBC team came under fire on a street in the capital, Riyadh.

He did not directly mention the shooting, but said security forces would hunt down the “terrorists” to “eradicate them.”

Prince Faisal also suggested Saudi Arabia would request that Britain extradite members of the Saudi opposition Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), including its leader, Saad Al Faqih.

Faqih has campaigned against Riyadh since 1996, demanding the restoration of a pure form of Wahhabism, a conservative strain of Islam that is the official faith of the kingdom.

“Those whose implication in terrorism is proved must be extradited to the parties who want to question them... and this minority includes those who call themselves opposition in London.”

It was the first public statement by a member of the Saudi government to suggest Riyadh would request extradition, which, under British law, can be a long and complicated process, particularly if political motives can be evoked. Egypt and Yemen are struggling to obtain the extradition from Britain of Islamists suspected of links to terrorism.

“The context we live in is exceptional and every state must cooperate seriously,” the minister said. “To say that [extradition] contravenes the law... is not an acceptable pretext in the framework of the war on terror that is underway.”

“All states must cooperate and not be an obstacle” in this war, he said.

BBC correspondent Frank Gardner lay in a critical but stable condition in a Saudi hospital after he was shot outside the home of a militant in a slum area of southern Riyadh. It was the first attack against journalists in the kingdom, and came barely a week after gunmen killed 22 people, including several Westerners, in the eastern city of Khobar.AFP