KUWAIT CITY, 19 December 2004 — A total of 11 Kuwaitis have been killed in recent military clashes with US forces in Iraq, the daily Al-Siyassa reported yesterday.
An additional 45 to 55 other Kuwaiti fighters are currently in Iraq, the report quoted informed sources as saying.
There are also an unknown number of “bidun” or stateless individuals who had traveled from Kuwait and are believed to be with the Kuwaiti fighters. Iraqi insurgents consider them Kuwaitis, the sources noted.
Three Kuwaitis were killed in Al-Romadi and the others died in recent clashes in Fallujah. Although the number of Kuwaitis killed in Iraq has not been officially confirmed, local newspapers have published several notices by Kuwaiti families who said their relatives had been “martyred” in Iraq and confirmed their deaths or had received condolences over the past year.
Al-Siyassa’s tally of Kuwaiti deaths coincides with a controversial poster circulated in the emirate on Friday in honor of those “martyred” in Iraq and showed the photographs of 10 fighters, but named only one.
Al-Siyassa said that many Kuwaiti fighters entered Iraq via Syria or Iran. Others had obtained commercial entry visas issued in Kuwait, and then passed through the so-called “Allied Gate” near Abdali on the Kuwait-Iraq border used mainly by the US military.
Earlier this year, Kuwaiti authorities launched a sweep to arrest members of an extremist group that had been allegedly recruiting young Kuwaitis to join the fight against US troops in Iraq.
