KUWAIT CITY, December 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Some 250 U.S. soldiers have been struck by suspected food poisoning at an army camp in the southern Kuwaiti desert, said a spokesman from Camp Doha, the main U.S. army base in Kuwait on Wednesday, December 11.

"Approximately 250 were affected in Camp Arifjan," Captain Darryl Wright told Agence France-Presse (AFP). "Two were admitted to a Kuwaiti hospital for further evaluation."

Water supplies to the camp tested negative, while food sources are still being tested as the possible cause.

The food products used come from the United States and Europe, as well as from local suppliers, Wright said.

He added that food at the camp, which is prepared on the facility, is supplied by U.S. contracting company Brown and Root and assisted by third country nationals.

Wright would not comment when asked if the incident could be the result of foul play.

The catering company "stopped serving dinner on the 9th [December], but resumed on the 10th," Wright said.

Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai Al-Aam reported Wednesday that dizziness, vomiting, fever and exhaustion broke out after the troops ate meals supplied by a Kuwaiti catering firm.

This incident came following five shooting incidents against U.S. forces, one fatal, involving U.S. soldiers in Kuwait.

On October 8, two Kuwaitis killed a marine and wounded another during war games on Failaka island, 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Kuwait City.

Kuwait condemned the attack as a "terrorist" act, but officials played down three shooting incidents that followed involving U.S. soldiers. No injuries were reported.

Then on November 21, a Kuwaiti police officer shot and wounded two U.S. soldiers in a civilian vehicle on a highway south of the capital. The officer told state security he "hated Americans" and had planned to kill them.

The number of U.S. servicemen, according to officials, stationed in Kuwait has ballooned to 15,000, and new desert camps have had to be built in the emirate to accommodate them as "tension" grows over Iraq due to U.S. insistence to attack Iraq.

Two dozen Apache helicopter gunships, tanks and combat vehicles for at least two armored brigade combat teams have been shipped in with the troops, many of whom are conducting high-profile exercises in the northern desert, close to the Iraqi border.

Training is virtually round-the-clock and the media is being given increased access to some of the camps as well as the Udairi range, a vast training area northwest of Kuwait City where live-fire exercises are underway.

U.S. camps have sprouted particularly in the northern desert, namely the Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Commando camps. The latter houses U.S. marines.

A new camp, Arifjan, was recently also built in the south of the country.

Camp Doha, the main base, 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Kuwait City, is the largest and oldest, and houses thousands of troops and heavy equipment, including tanks and artillery.

The headquarters of the U.S. Third Army - which controls troops in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia - was transferred to Kuwait in late 2001 amid a military buildup in Afghanistan.

But American and Kuwaiti officials like to deny that the buildup here is in preparation for any U.S.-led war against Iraq.

From official U.S. announcements, an extra 3,000 U.S. troops have arrived in the last month since when Kuwait has sealed off a quarter of the country as the war games go on.

Kuwait, seen as a frontline state in any possible war on Iraq, has sought to distance itself from the fact that the number of U.S. troops here has increased threefold in less than a year and says they are only here for joint exercises.

The emirate, while voicing steadfast support for its main ally, has publicly said it is opposed to any U.S. military strikes on Iraq without a U.N. mandate.