U.S. Troops In Kuwait Attacked Again

U.S. forces came under fire from two civilian vehicles near a training area in northern Kuwait on Monday, officials said. No one was hurt.

It was the third case of gunfire involving American forces in Kuwait in less than a week. On Tuesday, two Kuwaitis ambushed Marines during training exercises, killing one and wounding a second. Marines killed the two attackers.

"At approximately 7:50 a.m. local time, shots were fired from two unidentified civilian sports utility vehicles at U.S. military units near northern Kuwait," Central Command spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nick Balice in Tampa told CBS Radio News. "No U.S. military personnel returned fire and [there were] no reports of injuries."

The U.S. troops "were in a training area in Kuwait," he added.

The U.S. military and the Kuwaiti Defense and Interior ministries were investigating, a U.S. embassy statement said.

Within a few hours, Kuwaiti officials began privately suggesting the targets may have been pigeons, not American forces. Bird hunters start heading out this time of year as temperatures drop below 100 degrees.

Kuwaiti Defense Minister Sheik Jaber Mubarak Al Sabah said it was too early to say if Monday's shooting was a terror attack.

But he said Kuwaitis and Americans are re-examining security measures near training areas because such incidents "affect not only the friendly military forces, but also Kuwait as a state." He did not say what new measures were being considered.

The U.S. military official, however, said the troops involved had "no doubt" the shots were meant for them. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Oct. 8, two Kuwaitis who had trained with Muslim militants in Afghanistan ambushed Marines during U.S. military training in Kuwait, killing one Marine and wounding another. Marines killed the two attackers.

Kuwait said 15 men have confessed to helping plan the Oct. 8 shooting, which it called a terrorist act. Of them, Islamic Affairs and Justice Minister Ahmed Baqer said "five or 10" are affiliated with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. The rest were involved in selling weapons, he said, but had no al Qaeda connections.

He said the men in custody considered one of the slain attackers, 21-year-old Anas al-Kandari, as their leader and that he alone had pledged allegiance to bin Laden. The other assailant was al-Kandari's cousin, Jassem al-Hajiri, 26.

A day after that shooting, U.S. army soldiers fired a shot at a vehicle overtaking their Humvee utility vehicle when, according to U.S. officials, an occupant pointed a gun at their vehicle. Officials later said occupants of the civilian vehicle claimed only to have been holding a cell phone. No one was hurt.

A statement attributed to bin Laden that appeared on an Islamic Web site Monday praised the Oct. 8 shooting in Kuwait and an Oct. 6 fire and explosion aboard a French tanker off Yemen that investigators believe may have been a terror attack.

"We congratulate our Islamic community on the bold heroic holy war that was executed by its sons of the faithful holy warriors in Yemen against a crusader oil tanker and in Kuwait against the invading and occupying American troops," the Arabic statement said. "By exploding the oil tanker in Yemen, the holy warriors hit the umbilical cord and life line of the crusader community, reminding the enemy of the heavy cost of blood and the gravity of losses they will pay as a price for their continued aggression on our community and looting of our wealth."

Such statements have appeared periodically on web sites that cloak the identity of those who run them and cater to anti-Western Muslims. Authenticating such statements is difficult.

U.S. forces have been training in Kuwait since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
Many Kuwaitis consider the United States the friend that liberated their country from Iraqi occupation in the 1991 Gulf War. But some Kuwaiti Muslim fundamentalists see the U.S. presence here as a source of corrupting influence.

Neighboring Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, expressed concerned that al Qaeda members may be in Kuwait, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said.

"The presence of al Qaeda members in Kuwait harms us and we had hoped that those people would put their country's interest before anything else," Prince Nayef told reporters late Sunday.