Kuwait holds five alleged militants

Kuwait holds five alleged militants

There have been several attacks on US targets in Kuwait

Kuwait says it has arrested five suspected Islamic militants and seized a large quantity of weapons and ammunition that the men were allegedly training with.

The five men - four Kuwaitis and one other, all in their mid-30s - told security police they had been learning to operate the weapons in desert areas.

They said they had buried other weapons such as hand grenades, cannons and shells, a Kuwaiti Interior Ministry statement said.

Many of the items found were left behind by Iraqi forces after they were ousted from Kuwait by US-led troops during the Gulf War in 1991.

Kuwait, a US ally and currently home to thousands of US troops, has seen several attacks on Westerners in the past few months, as tensions rise over the possibility of a war in Iraq.

Previous incidents

In January an American man was shot dead and another seriously injured by a young Kuwaiti suspect, who later told police that he had "embraced the ideology of al-Qaeda," the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry said.

The two men had been working as contractors at Camp Doha, where many US troops are based.

In November last year a Kuwaiti policeman with a history of mental illness shot and wounded two American soldiers after stopping their car.

He was later sentenced to 15 years in prison.

And in October 2002, suspected Islamic militants opened fire on a group of US marines, killing one of them before being shot dead themselves.