Posted on 03/30/2003 9:18:07 AM PST by HAL9000
KUWAIT CITY, Mar 30, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- A man in civilian clothes drove a pickup truck into a group of soldiers standing outside a store at the desert base of Camp Udairi in Kuwait on Sunday, a U.S. military official said.Col. Guy Shields, chief U.S. military spokesman in Kuwait City, said 15 people were injured in the incident. Fourteen of them were treated at the scene, and one soldier was taken to a military treatment facility with a knee injury.
The driver of the pickup truck was shot, Shields said.
"He was shot twice," Shields said. "He right now is in critical condition at a military facility." He said that the driver was neither American nor Kuwaiti, but did not know what nationality he was.
Shields said the incident was under investigation. The motive was not known, and it was unclear whether it was an attack or an accident.
However, a Kuwaiti Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, later told The Associated Press that the driver was an Egyptian who had deliberately run down the men.
The official said that the man was one of four Egyptian electricians who had gone to the camp to do some work. They had been offered breakfast by the Americans, but that the driver locked the other three Egyptians in the breakfast room and took the truck and "ran down (the Americans) purposely," the Kuwaiti official said.
Earlier, Lt. Col. Larry Cox, a public affairs officer at the Coalition press office in Kuwait City, said about six people were injured.
No explosives were found in the truck, a Pentagon official said.
It would not be uncommon for screened third-country nationals to be working at U.S. military installations in Kuwait. More than half of the people in Kuwait are foreign workers, many of them from the Philippines, India, Bangladesh and other Middle Eastern countries.
Camp Udairi is primarily a V Corps aviation base that is also used for maintenance and supply.
Kuwait, an oil-rich desert state, has hosted a virtually permanent U.S. Army presence since the Gulf War ended in 1991. Now it is the key launching pad for U.S. ground forces invading Iraq.
American troops and civilians have been killed or wounded in Kuwait in separate incidents since October.
On Jan. 21, Islamic extremists were blamed for killing a San Diego computer contractor and injuring another American close to Camp Doha, where U.S. forces are based.
A Kuwaiti policeman was sentenced to 15 years in prison for shooting and seriously wounding two U.S. soldiers on Nov. 21 after allegedly stopping their car on a highway.
In October, Muslim fundamentalists killed one U.S. Marine and injured another on a Kuwaiti island. Other Marines killed the gunmen, who were religious extremists.
On March 23, a grenade attack killed two U.S. officers and wounded 14 other soldiers at a 101st Airborne Division camp in Kuwait. U.S. soldier Hasan Akbar, 32, is the only person being held in connection with the case.
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