KUWAIT, 22 January 2003 — A hail of automatic rifle fire killed an American working for the US military and wounded another in an ambush on their car yesterday near a US base in Kuwait where Washington is preparing for a possible war on Iraq.
The US Embassy condemned the incident as a terrorist attack. It was the third time since October that Americans have been killed or injured in attacks in Kuwait.
The men were ambushed at around 9:15 a.m. (0615 GMT) while driving on a highway north of Kuwait City near Camp Doha, the main US army base in Kuwait. Kuwaiti police said one or more attackers had opened fire from trees and bushes at the side of the road before escaping. Cartridge cases believed to be from rounds fired from a Kalashnikov rifle or rifles were found at the scene.
The US Embassy said the dead and injured were contractors with a firm working for the US Defense Department. It named the dead man as 46-year-old Michael Rene Pouliot, an employee of a software development firm based in San Diego. The name of his injured colleague was being withheld until his family was notified.
Pouliot’s body was removed from a tan-colored four-wheel-drive vehicle about two hours after the attack. One side of the vehicle was riddled with more than 20 bullets, and the windscreen was fractured. Some of the side windows had been shot out completely. A pool of blood was visible on the road, until police covered it with sand.
“We condemn this terrorist incident which has tragically cost the life of an innocent American citizen,” the US ambassador to Kuwait, Richard Jones, said in a statement. The embassy said the injured man had been shot in the shoulder and thigh and was in hospital in Kuwait City.
More than 15,000 US soldiers are in Kuwait and more are arriving every week ahead of a possible war with Iraq. The military also employs a large number of US civilian contractors to help run its camps.
Last November, a Kuwaiti policeman shot and seriously wounded two US soldiers on a highway south of Kuwait City and the previous month two Kuwaitis attacked US Marines training on an island, killing one. There have also been several reports of shots fired at US troops training in the Kuwaiti desert.
Westerners living in the emirate urged calm and made no plans for an emergency evacuation. “We’re angry but we’re not scared and we’re not going to leave,” vowed Gilbert, a former US Marine who works for a US contracting company. “Life goes on. You’ve got to expect that things like this will happen. Everybody’s talking about it, but they’re not scaring anyone,” he said.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal described the incident as “tragic”. “This is something tragic, especially because of relations between Kuwait and the United States,” Prince Saud said after talks in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
“It shows that there are crazy people doing such acts. We send our condolences to the American people,” the prince added. (Agencies)
