January 26, 2003	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 22,1423

KUWAIT CITY, Jan 25: Shots were fired on Saturday near a US military convoy, the seventh shooting involving Americans in Kuwait since last October, as Washington mulls reducing its diplomatic presence in the tense Gulf state.

“This morning at approximately 8:15 am a convoy reported shots fired from a car on the 6th ring road at the 605 overpass,” US army spokesman Sgt First Class David Dismukes told AFP.

There were no injuries reported, and Dismukes could not specify if the shots were aimed at the convoy.

The shooting came after a highway ambush on Tuesday killed US civilian Michael Rene Pouliot and seriously wounded David Caraway near Camp Doha, the largest US army base here, 30 kilometres north of Kuwait City.

In Washington, a senior State Department official said the United States may scale down its diplomatic presence in Kuwait — a key ally and possible launch pad for US-led strikes on Iraq — due to heightened security concerns following Pouliot’s murder.

Saturday’s gunfire appeared similar to three previous incidents, when shots were reportedly fired near US soldiers, either traveling in a convoy or during exercises, and with no reported injuries.

Kuwait played down those incidents, saying they could have been the result of bird hunters.

The emirate’s defence ministry has since sealed off the entire northwestern part of the emirate in what it described as a safety precaution for citizens during ongoing US and Kuwaiti military exercises.

A diplomatic source told AFP a suspect licence plate number had been registered during Saturday’s shooting and passed onto Kuwaiti security authorities.

But a senior Kuwaiti security official told AFP that a report on Saturday’s incident had so far not been filed with the local authorities.

A Kuwaiti arrested in connection with Tuesday’s attack confessed to shooting the two Americans, both contractors working with the US military in Kuwait, the emirate’s interior ministry said.

The suspect, 25-year-old Sami Mohammed Marzook Obaid al-Mutairi, also “confessed he embraced the ideas of Al-Qaeda,” the statement said.

Tuesday’s attack, the first to target civilians, was the second deadly one. Last October, two Kuwaiti gunmen killed a US marine and wounded another during wargames on Failaka island, 20 kilometres east of Kuwait City.

The Kuwaiti interior ministry said one of the gunmen in the Failaka shooting — both also killed in the attack — had sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

In November, a Kuwaiti police officer shot and seriously wounded two US soldiers after stopping them on a highway south of the capital.

The suspect, Khalid Messier al-Shimmari, allegedly told state security during interrogation that he hated Americans and wanted to kill them.

The US ambassador to Kuwait, Richard Jones, told reporters Friday there were two different militant cells of Afghan Kuwaitis operating in the emirate.

“There are definitely people out there who wish us harm,” Jones said.

Tuesday’s attack was condemned by Kuwait and labeled as “terrorist” by the US embassy, which has urged citizens to step up their security awareness because of the continued risk of terrorist attacks by groups linked to Al-Qaeda.

“We are looking very carefully at the security situation for our own people and for Americans” in Kuwait, the State Department official said on condition of anonymity.

Some 8,000 Americans are residents of Kuwait, while more than 16,000 US troops are currently based in the emirate as the United States threatens to launch a massive military campaign against neighbouring Iraq.—AFP