Two U.S. Army Apache helicopters fly over a tent structure at Camp New York in the Kuwait desert

KUWAIT CITY, November 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Kuwaiti police officer suspected of shooting and wounding two U.S. soldiers was arrested Friday, November 22, in Saudi Arabia where authorities were preparing to extradite him back to Kuwait.

The junior officer in the Kuwaiti police force allegedly shot two U.S soldiers Thursday, November 21, while they were traveling on a highway south of Kuwait City, the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The suspect, identified by Kuwaiti security sources as Khalid Messier al-Shimmari, then allegedly fled across the border to Saudi Arabia.

In Riyadh, the official SPA news agency quoted a Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman as saying the Saudis had apprehended the "Kuwaiti whose arrest had been requested by the authorities in Kuwait."

A Saudi security source and a Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry source, both of whom asked not to be named, said procedures for handing over the suspect were underway, and he could return to Kuwait as early as Friday night, AFP reported.

Earlier, a Saudi security source told AFP the suspect had been sent back to Kuwait, but the same source said later that, while the handover was imminent, it had not yet taken place.

U.S. military officers said the soldiers, who are assigned to the Third Army, were in a civilian vehicle but on "official business" when they were shot by a gunman.

Their condition was labeled "serious but stable" and their status remained the same Friday, Colonel Rick Thomas, a spokesman at Camp Doha military base, told AFP.

One was shot in the face and the other in the shoulder.

"I don't think we've seen anything that indicates" it was an attack involving "al-Qaeda or some other terrorist organization", Thomas said.

Asked if the shooting was considered an anti-American attack, Thomas said, "I think until we finish the joint investigation" with the Kuwaitis, the motive can not be established.

Kuwaiti newspapers Friday said the suspect was not affiliated with any religious group and that he had a history of psychological problems.

A senior Kuwaiti security source told AFP the suspect "had been admitted to hospital three times for psychiatric treatment."

The source, who is close to the investigation, said he "dropped his companion, another policeman, at home and told him he was going to buy a newspaper and would be returning. The incident happened while he was out buying the paper."

The suspect may have initially pulled the two soldiers over for speeding before shooting them, the source said.

The attack, condemned by Kuwaiti officials and MPs, was the fifth shooting incident involving U.S. forces in Kuwait since October 8 when two Kuwaitis killed a marine and wounded another during war games on Failaka island, 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Kuwait City.

Until the Thursday incident, no U.S. forces were wounded in the subsequent attacks, and it was never clarified if they had even been targeted.

Kuwait, liberated from Iraqi occupation by a U.S.-led multinational coalition in the 1991 Gulf War, condemned the Failaka shooting as a "terrorist" act.

However, Kuwaiti officials generally played down the three incidents that followed, saying the shots could have been fired by bird hunters.

The emirate has since sealed off the entire northwestern region, one quarter of the country, in what it described as a precaution during ongoing joint Kuwaiti-American military exercises.

One of the two assailants gunned down in the island attack had sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, the Interior Minister has said.

Around 10,000 US troops are currently based in Kuwait, mostly at Camp Doha, 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Kuwait City.

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