KUWAIT CITY - Kuwait has arrested up to 50 people suspected of helping two Kuwaitis to kill a United States Marine and wound another in what the Government said was a terrorist attack.
US defence officials said the Kuwaitis who staged the attack on Wednesday had attended training camps in Afghanistan run by Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "We believe there is a terrorist link here," one said.
In another incident yesterday, a US soldier fired a single bullet at a car, apparently believing he was under threat as troops moved to a desert training area near the Iraq border, a US military spokesman said.
The military provided no details of the incident on a highway in northern Kuwait, but according to a Western source "a car filled with guys approached the Americans and harassed them".
"There was firing but we are not sure if the civilian vehicle also fired or not."
The two attackers, killed by the Marines on a Kuwaiti island, Failaka, were buried in what witnesses said turned into an anti-Western rally amid chants of "Allahu Akbar", or God is Great.
Kuwait is holding "between 40 and 50 people as suspects and witnesses as part of the investigation", a Kuwait security source told Reuters.
He said the attackers were known to authorities as Islamic activists who had been questioned about visits to Afghanistan.
The US has about 10,000 troops in Kuwait, including ground forces training in the desert, Marines training in the northern Gulf and Air Force troops engaged in enforcing a no-fly zone over southern Iraq with US warplanes deployed at Kuwaiti bases.
Some 450 British soldiers and eight Tornado warplanes are based in Kuwait as part of the no-fly zone operation.
Abdullah al-Kandari, the brother of one of the attackers, Anas Ahmad al-Kandari, 21, said he was not aware if Anas was linked to al Qaeda, but he had asked to be buried as a "martyr".
He said Anas was angered by scenes on television of what he called Israeli massacres of Palestinians and in recent days had vowed to kill those who were killing Palestinian Muslims.
Writer Mohammad al-Mulafi, who attended the burial of the two Kuwaitis, said a clergyman addressing hundreds of mourners had said: "The Jews and Christians must exit from the peninsula of the Arabs."
The clergyman also said that "what the attackers did was their duty".
Such scenes are rare in Kuwait, which remains officially grateful to the US and its Western allies for leading the 1991 Gulf War that ended a seven-month Iraqi occupation.
- REUTERS
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Marine's killers trained by al Qaeda, claims US
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