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KUWAIT CITY - Kuwait said on Tuesday it has foiled a plot by suspected Al-Qaeda members to attack a US military base on its territory and arrested six nationals over their alleged role in the plan.
The six Kuwaitis were also planning to attack state security offices and other government buildings, according to an interior ministry statement.
About 15,000 US soldiers are stationed in Kuwait, the oil-rich Gulf emirate which is also used as a transit point for thousands of US soldiers going to and from neighbouring Iraq.
The suspects confessed to planning an attack on the Arifjan base, which lies south of the Kuwaiti capital close to the Saudi border, the ministry said.
Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television said the attack was planned to be carried out during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts around August 20.
Al-Qaeda-linked militants accused of plotting to attack US forces in the emirate and in Iraq were involved in a deadly gunfight with Kuwaiti troops in 2005.
In 2007, a Kuwaiti court commuted death sentences against four members of the Peninsula Lions Brigades, a militant outfit affiliated with Al-Qaeda, to life in prison over the gunbattles.
The plot was revealed just days after a visit to Washington by Kuwaiti emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, who met US President Barack Obama at the White House on August 3.
Former US president George W. Bush visited Camp Arifjan during a trip to Kuwait in January 2008.
- AFP/ir
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