March 21, 2003	Friday	Muharram 17, 1424

KUWAIT CITY, March 20: Kuwait, where 180,000 US and British troops are primed for a ground invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein, came under surprise missile attack from Iraq on Thursday, plunging the emirate into a panic not seen since the 1991 war.

Residents in Iraq’s southern neighbour scrambled for gas masks and chemical warfare suits and headed for makeshift shelters as air raid sirens wailed repeatedly amid fears of chemical attack from Baghdad’s snap retaliation to pre-dawn US air strikes.

None of the six Iraqi missiles the defence ministry said were fired from across the border was known to have caused any casualties but two were intercepted by Patriot missiles, one over Kuwait Bay on the northern rim of the city.

Normal broadcasting on state television was interrupted and a rotating air raid siren appeared every time a missile was incoming, with a warning of danger and an instruction to citizens not to venture outside.

Sirens wailed five times in short bursts from around 12.30pm for about an hour as news emerged that the first missile had been fired on northern Kuwait, where the majority of the US and British forces ranged against Saddam have set up base.

After months of often bland reassurance that Iraq had little if any of its once-feared arsenal left, many residents complained they were not receiving enough information on events and few had any idea of the location of the closest civil defence air shelters.

Shockwaves were felt around the capital with every attack, and each time the sirens wailed, phone lines jammed.

The streets of the capital were largely deserted on what is the first day of the weekend for government employees. The few stores which were open were doing brisk business in protective equipment and emergency previsions.

The official KUNA news agency reported that Kuwait University would be closed for a week while state schools were also shut down.

Special Kuwaiti security forces are deployed all over the country and road blocks set up along the main coastal road. Police cars flanked by armoured vehicles were also seen cruising the streets, broadcasting the same message by loud hailer.

Of the six missiles fired at Kuwait, the last two were longer-range Scuds but the first four had a medium-range, Colonel Yussif al-Mulla, a Kuwait defence ministry spokesman, said on state-run television.

Speculation focused on Iraq’s banned Al-Samoud 2 missiles, which UN weapons inspectors were destroying before the disarmament mission halted ahead of Thursday’s attack on Baghdad.

The last two missiles were both intercepted over the country by Patriot missiles, while the first two crashed into the Mutlaa desert, 40 kilometres north of Kuwait, the Kuwaiti defence ministry said.

An officer with the US Army’s Third Infantry Division said that the two missiles shot down were Iraqi Ababil-100s, one of which was believed to be en route to Kuwait City.

Some two hours later, the ministry announced that three more missiles had hit Kuwait.

The sirens sounded again and the ministry said a sixth missile had struck.

Kuwaiti Brigadier General Abdul Rahman Mohammed al-Othman later told journalists that Kuwaiti “units in the north have been shot at by small arms fire, 50-calibre (weaponry), then mortar fire.”—AFP