KUWAIT, 22 November 2002 — A Kuwaiti policeman shot and seriously wounded two US soldiers yesterday, the Kuwaiti government said, in the latest in a series of shootings targeting US troops training in the country.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the attacker was a junior policeman, Khalid Mayser Al-Shammari, who fled across the Al-Salimi border to Saudi Arabia after shooting the soldiers.

“The culprit of this criminal act fled to...Saudi Arabia and coordination is under way with security authorities in the Kingdom to arrest and hand him over,” the statement said.

It was the fifth such attack against US forces in Kuwait since October, and comes amid a US military buildup in the region for a possible war against Iraq.

The two US soldiers were shot around 10:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) while driving on a highway between the main army base at Camp Doha and Orayfijan, 60 km south of Kuwait City, a spokesman at Camp Doha told AFP.

The two were in “serious but stable condition” and neither injury appeared to be life threatening, the spokesman said. One was shot in the face and the other in the shoulder.

The “two American soldiers were shot while driving their private vehicle, a white Toyota, on the seventh ring road,” the statement said. A senior Kuwaiti security source told AFP the suspect “had been admitted to hospital three times for psychiatric treatment. “This morning, the suspect dropped his companion, another policeman, at home and told him he was going to buy a newspaper and would be returning. The incident happened while he was out buying the paper,” said the source, who is close to the investigation. Khalid Mayser is married to a Saudi woman, according to Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News.

When the police raided Mayser’s house in Kuwait, they found his wife getting ready to flee.

The suspect may have initially pulled the two soldiers over for speeding before shooting them, the source said.

The US spokesman said the soldiers, who are assigned to the Third Army, were in a civilian vehicle but out “on official business.

“Both soldiers were transported by military aircraft to the Kuwaiti military hospital,” he said. The incident was under investigation by Kuwaiti authorities and the US Criminal Investigation Command, the spokesman said. Names of the two soldiers were being withheld until their families were notified.

Kuwaiti Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Hamad Al-Sabah condemned the attack and said it would not hurt strong ties with the United States. “This incident is alien to Kuwaiti society, and the people share the government’s position about seeking help from the American forces to bolster Kuwait’s security and independence,” he was quoted as saying by the state-run KUNA news agency.

Some 10,000 US troops are in Kuwait for the Operation Desert Spring training exercise. Earlier this month, Kuwait sealed off large portions of the country to safeguard the security of the military exercises.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked at the NATO summit meeting in Prague about the shooting, said the circumstances were unclear. “What actually transpired is unclear,” he told reporters. “I suffer from having two reports which conflict, and early reports tend to be wrong.”

Last month two Kuwaitis attacked US Marines training on a Kuwaiti island, killing one and wounding another.

Since then, there have been several reports of shots fired at US soldiers training in the desert, although some Kuwaiti officials blame bird hunters.

In the aftermath of the Oct. 8 attack which killed a Marine training on a Kuwaiti island, Kuwait said it had busted a 15-man cell which had plotted the attack and which was indirectly linked to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.