A man opened fire on Friday, December 6, at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, killing three people before being killed by police. This Saudi citizen and a member of the Royal Air Force was in the United States to undergo military training.

The assailant, who could be a pilot or an aviation technician, perpetrated his attack with a handgun.

In an appeal to US President Donald Trump, King Salman of Saudi Arabia condemned the "awful" shootings, according to the Saudi official SPA agency, which confirmed an information tweeted by Donald Trump. According to him, the Saudi king conveyed his condolences to the relatives of the victims and said that the attack did not reflect the feelings of his people vis-à-vis the Americans.

"He assured (Donald) Trump of the kingdom's full support in the United States and ordered Saudi security services to cooperate with US agencies," according to SPA.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has been called to express his sincere condolences and give his sympathies to the families and friends of the warriors who were killed and wounded in the attack that took place in Pensacola, Florida ....

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2019

The investigators were trying to determine if this attack was terrorism. Most of the perpetrators of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States were Saudi. Both countries are, however, great allies.

The Saudi government "owed a debt"

"I think there will be many answers to the fact that this individual, a foreigner, a member of the Saudi Air Force, was training on our soil and committed this," said the Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The Saudi government "is indebted for a debt here because it is one of its nationals," he added.

The shooting took place in one of the classrooms at the Pensacola base, said David Morgan, the sheriff of Escambia County, without specifying the identity or motive of the shooter.

The provisional toll of Friday's attack is three killed and seven wounded, not to mention the assailant, who was "neutralized" by two agents who were wounded in the exchange of fire, said Sheriff Morgan .

"Browsing the crime scene was like being on the set of a movie (...), we do not expect anything like that to happen here," he added at a press conference. "A hundred or so law enforcement vehicles have probably rushed to the scene," a local witness, Jeff Bergosh, told local newspaper Pensacola News Journal.

About 16,000 soldiers are accommodated at the Pensacola base, where more than 7,000 civilians are also employed. Acrobatic air patrols, such as the Blue Angels, are stationed there. The site is used by the US Navy for training programs for allied military personnel.

Two days after a shooting in Pearl Harbor

The shooting comes two days after an American sailor killed two people by gunshot and wounded a third on the shipyard at the Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii before committing suicide.

The gunman, a 22-year-old uniformed sailor, opened fire with his service weapon, an M4 rifle, before turning his handgun against him. His motives are, for the moment, also not known.

Several US military bases have been bereaved in recent years by soldiers shot deadly.

In September 2013, a former sailor, Aaron Alexis, killed 12 people in a navy compound in Washington before being shot by soldiers. And in November 2009, a Palestinian-born military psychiatrist killed 13 people and wounded 32 at the Fort Hood, Texas military base before being wounded and restrained.

Hundreds of Saudi soldiers follow training in the US armed forces every year, illustrating the strong ties between Washington and Riyadh.

With AFP