WASHINGTON/KUWAIT, 10 October — A US soldier in a military vehicle shot at a civilian vehicle in Kuwait yesterday, after being threatened with a firearm by one of its occupants, a US defense official said. The incident came a day after an attack on US troops engaged in training claimed the life of a marine and left another wounded.
The military vehicle, a Humvee, was overtaken by the civilian car on Kuwait’s Highway 80 north of Camp Doha around 1600 GMT, said the official. "As the car pulled in front, one of its occupants drew a weapon and pointed it at the occupants of the Humvee," the official said. "At this point, the occupants of the Humvee shot and hit the hood of the civilian vehicle, forcing it off the road," the official said. The Humvee continued on its way without stopping.
Earlier, Kuwait said that it had arrested a number of people suspected of aiding two Kuwaitis who killed the Marine and wounded another on Tuesday. The attackers, killed by the Marines, were buried in Kuwait yesterday in what witnesses said turned into an anti-Western rally amid loud chants of "Allahu Akbar".
"There are numerous people under arrest," Kuwaiti Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammad Al-Salem Al-Sabah told reporters. He added "the numbers are changing by the minute".
The two Kuwaitis approached the Marines in a pick-up truck on Tuesday, stepped out of the vehicle and opened fire on troops during an annual military exercise on the Kuwaiti island of Failaka in the Gulf. Marines killed the two assailants after they had sped away in the truck.
The Al-Watan newspaper said that the two men had rented the pick-up from a Bangladeshi living on the island and that they had hidden in a mosque on the island before carrying out the attack.
The Pentagon identified the dead Marine as Lance-Corporal Antonio Sledd, 20, of Hillsborough, Fla.
Kuwait named the dead attackers as cousins Anas Ahmad Ibrahim Abdel-Rehim Al-Kandari, born in 1981, and Jassem Hamad Mubarak Salem Al-Hajri, born in 1976.
Writer Mohammad Al-Mulafi, who attended the burial of the two Kuwaitis, said that some mourners chased away news photographers at the scene. Mulafi quoted a man, addressing hundreds of people at the burial, as saying that "the Jews and Christians must exit from the peninsula of the Arabs" and that "what the attackers did was their duty".
Mulafi said he knew the men who attacked the Marines and believed they were motivated by opposition to a new US law requiring government documents to state that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Mulafi said one of the attackers called him after President George W. Bush signed the law this month and said: "I believe that fighting the Americans is more of a priority than fighting the Israelis." A Western diplomat said the apparent motive was credible. The Interior Ministry did not say if Tuesday’s attackers were militants, but security sources said they were probably linked to anti-American Islamic groups.
