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U.S. 'attack plot' - Kuwaitis held
KUWAIT CITY (CNN) -- Three Kuwaitis have been arrested for allegedly planning attacks on U.S. troops, the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry said Monday. The arrests follow a number of attacks on Americans in the country, where more than 100,000 members of the U.S. military are currently training for a possible U.S.-led strike on Iraq. A statement by the ministry said Kuwaiti security agencies had determined the three were planning terrorist attacks on U.S. troops in Kuwait. It added that weapons and ammunition were seized when the three -- all described as Islamic fundamentalists -- were taken into custody. They were identified as Ahmad Mutlaq Al-Mutairi, Abdullah Mutlag Naser Al-Mutairi, and Mussaed Hawran Shbeib Al-Enezi. U.S. Marines began landing Monday morning in the Kuwaiti desert after a 36-day trip from San Diego. Three waves of three Super Stallion and Sea Knight helicopters landed carrying 400 to 500 Marines. The rest of the contingent of 2,000 Marines was scheduled to come ashore later in the day. The Marines were transported on three ships: the USS Comstock, USS Boxer and USS Dubuque. Monday's landing of Marines from the 1st Marine Regiment of the 4th Marine Battalion, stationed on the U.S. west coast, followed by five days the landing of several thousand Marines from the 2nd Marine Division, based on the U.S. east coast. Those Marines landed in seven amphibious landing ships dispatched from the USS Tarawa. In January a civilian U.S. government contractor was killed in an ambush on a car near Camp Doha and another American citizen was seriously wounded. On November 21, two U.S. soldiers were shot and wounded by a Kuwaiti policeman near Camp Doha, and on October 8, 2002, one U.S. Marine was killed and another wounded by extremists. The investigation of the civilian contractor's murder led police to a number of alleged co-conspirators. Police recovered a cache of weapons including one rocket propelled grenade, four machine-guns, "several pistols" and a large quantity of ammunition. Police said they determined that a number of other attacks against Americans had been planned. In another Gulf state, Bahrain, last week authorities said they had broken up an alleged terrorist ring planning attacks in the kingdom -- home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. Five Bahraini men aged between 31 and 41 were arrested on charges of plotting terrorist acts against the island's "national interests and endangering the lives of innocent people," the official Bahrain News Agency (BNA) reported. Police also seized weapons and ammunition.
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