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Some 10,000 U.S. troops are currently based in Kuwait
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KUWAIT
CITY, November 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A gunman shot
and wounded two U.S. soldiers in an ambush Thursday, November 21, on a
highway outside Kuwait City, in the latest in a string of
anti-American attacks, as a U.S. missionary nurse was shot dead in
south Lebanon apparently because of anger against U.S. bias to Israel,
military presence in the Gulf and plans to attack Iraq.
“At
approximately 10:30 am (07:30 GMT), two United States soldiers were
shot by an unknown assailant while traveling between Camp Doha and
Orayfijan,” 60 kilometers or 37 miles south of Kuwait City,
spokesman at the main U.S. army camp told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Both
soldiers were transported by military aircraft to the Kuwaiti military
hospital,” he said.
The
two injured are in “serious but stable condition. One of the
soldiers was shot in the face and the other in the shoulder. Neither
injury appears life-threatening.”
The
incident was under investigation by Kuwaiti authorities and the U.S.
Criminal Investigation Command, the spokesman said. Names of the two
soldiers were being withheld, he added.
Kuwaiti
security sources earlier told AFP the two men were admitted to a
military hospital after the shooting, the fifth such incident in the
Gulf Arab state in less than two months.
“The
two soldiers are in hospital,” Khalid Al-Jarallah, undersecretary of
Kuwait’s foreign ministry, also confirmed.
“Yes
it was a shooting. It is still being investigated, until now there are
no details,” he told AFP.
A
U.S. marine was killed and another injured on October 8 when attacked
by two Kuwaitis while conducting war-games on Failaka island, 20
kilometers (12 miles) east of Kuwait City.
A
day later, U.S. forces opened fire on a vehicle they claimed it
occupants “drew a weapon and pointed it at” U.S. troops in a
Humvee all-terrain vehicle who were heading to their training area
north of Kuwait City.
Five
days later, the U.S. embassy said shots were fired from two
unidentified civilian sports utility vehicles at U.S. military units
near a northern Kuwait training area. There were no injuries.
On
November 2, U.S. forces were caught up in another incident in
Orayfijan during which "shots were fired in the vicinity of the
area where the soldiers are located," Camp Doha said at the time.
Kuwait
condemned the Failaka shooting as a "terrorist" act.
As
of November 2, Kuwait restricted access to the entire northwestern
part of the emirate, one quarter of the country, in what it described
as a precaution during continuing joint Kuwaiti-American military
exercises.
Some
10,000 U.S. troops are currently based in Kuwait, mostly at Camp Doha,
30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Kuwait City.
Meanwhile,
an American nurse at a Christian mission was shot dead Thursday in the
southern Lebanese port city of Sidon, apparently the victim of
anti-U.S. anger, police said.
“The
body of an American woman, a nurse in the clinic of an Evangelical
mission, was found in the building of that mission in a southern
district of Sidon. She had been shot dead,” a police official said.
The
victim was named as Bony Witheroll, a 31-year-old American who worked
for the Evangelical mission in Sidon for the past eight years.
She
was the first U.S. citizen to be murdered in Lebanon since the end of
the country's 1975-1990 civil war.
An
official at the U.S. embassy in Beirut indicated that Witheroll was a
U.S. citizen and that embassy security officers had been dispatched to
Sidon to follow the investigation.
A
police source said the crime did not appear to have a “personal
motive,” but probably stemmed instead from anti-Americanism.
“This
was apparently an act committed by a person filled with anti-American
feelings in the generally hostile climate toward the United States,
which people here reproach for its desire to carry out a war against
Iraq and for supporting Israel,” said the official, on condition of
anonymity.
By
late morning, no group had claimed responsibility for the killing.
Investigating
magistrate Nadim Abdel Malek told journalists at the scene that the
“investigation, which is secret, is being pursued to shed light on
the circumstances and the motives for this crime.”
Initial
reports said the murderer was an armed man who had knocked at the door
of the clinic.
“The
victim apparently opened the door to her killer, who immediately fired
three shots into her body, because there is no sign of (any other)
violence,” a detective told AFP.
She
was hit once in the face and twice in the chest, according to an AFP
correspondent who saw the body before it was transferred to the morgue
of a hospital in Sidon.
Also
in Saudi Arabia, a man armed with a pistol walked into a McDonald's
restaurant near a U.S. air base and set it on fire with gasoline, the
interior minister said in remarks published Thursday.
Prince
Nayef bin Abdel Aziz told the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) that the
restaurant was gutted following the attack Wednesday morning in Kharj
province, which houses the huge Prince Sultan air base.
The
gunman threatened an Asian employee before dousing parts of the
restaurant with gasoline and torching it, he said. Police launched a
hunt for the man in the area south-east of the capital Riyadh.
Prince
Nayef said the suspect would be caught, put on trial and given a
“deterrent sentence,” and recalled that even if McDonald’s is an
American chain, the franchise is owned by a Saudi.
Arab
and Muslim anger has been mounting at perceived U.S. bias toward
Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians as well as at a massive
U.S. military presence in the Gulf, including the latest showdown with
Iraq.
U.S.
fast food chains are among the a broad range of companies in Arab
countries that have suffered lost sales during a two-year campaign to
boycott U.S. brand names.
Anti
U.S. demos continue in different places in the world. On Wednesday,
November 21, several hundred protestors demonstrated against NATO and
the U.S. threat of war on Iraq, as police and troops mounted
ratchet-tight security around a landmark summit of the Alliance in
Prague.
The
demonstrators gathered on Prague’s Old Town Square, a highly
symbolic spot where the 1948 Prague Coup which launched four decades
of communist rule was launched.
“Bush
is a global fool, and we must oppose these global fools,” said the
head of the Czech Communist Party (KSCM), Miroslav Grebenicek,
launching a fierce attack on the U.S. threat of war against Iraq,
which is clouding the NATO summit.
